IRLF. 


ESBHBI 


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THE 


TARIFF    POLICY 


OF 


ENGLAND   AND   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES 
CONTRASTED. 


BY 

ERASTUS  B.  BIGELOW. 


UNIVERSITY 

OF 


BOSTON: 
LITTLE,    BROWN,   AND    COMPANY. 

1877. 


Cambridge : 
Press  of  John  Wilson  and  Son. 


GENERAL 


NOTE. 


SOME  of  the  tables  of  statistics,  and  some  of  the  argu- 
ments in  this  pamphlet,  are  taken  from  the  author's  work 
entitled,  "  The  Tariff  Question  Considered  in  Regard  to  the 
Policy  of  England  and  the  Interests  of  the  United  States," 
published  in  1862. 

Other  statistical  statements  and  numerical  comparisons, 
giving  results  of  more  recent  date,  were  compiled  expressly 
for  the  pamphlet.  In  all  cases,  the  statistical  facts  are 

derived  from  official  sources. 

E.  B.  B. 

BOSTON,  September,  1877. 


1 n.i?i 


CONTENTS. 


INTRODUCTION 7 

THE  TARIFF  POLICY  OF  ENGLAND 8 

THE  FREE-TRADE  ACTS  OF  ENGLAND  AND  THEIR  EFFECTS  .     .  12 
THE  TARIFF  POLICY  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES,  AND   ITS   RELA- 
TION TO  THAT   OF   ENGLAND 18 

OUR  EXPORTS  OE  MANUFACTURES 38 

EFFORTS   OF   ENGLAND  TO  INFLUENCE  THE  TARIFF  POLICY  OF 

OTHER  COUNTRIES 44 

CONCLUSION 53 

APPENDIX    .     .                                                     57 


THE    TAKIFF    POLICY 


OF 


ENGLAND  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES. 


is  a  prevailing  expectation  that  our  customs 
-*•  tariff  will  be  revised  by  the  next  Congress.  As  such 
legislation  will  have  a  direct  bearing  on  the  prosperity  of  the 
country,  it  is  important  that  the  probable  effects  of  proposed 
changes  should  be  clearly  understood.  Theoretical  and  par- 
tisan discussion  of  the  subject  will  do  but  little  towards 
that  end.  Nor  will  the  experience  of  other  nations  be  a 
safe  guide  for  us.  The  conditions  of  production  are  so 
various  in  different  countries  that  the  customs  tariff  of 
every  nation  should  be  determined  by  its  own  interests  and 
needs. 

There  is  no  ultimate  principle  of  universal  application, 
involved  either  in  free  trade  or  protection.  They  are  ques- 
tions of  policy.  Free  trade  in  England,  and  protection  in  the 
United  States,  have  been  so  much  discussed  on  theoretical 
grounds,  in  disregard  of  facts  and  the  peculiar  condition  and 
requirements  of  the  respective  countries,  that  a  popular 
misapprehension  prevails  in  regard  to  their  real  character 
and  effect. 

It  is  my  purpose  to  discuss  these  questions,  in  their  practi- 
cal relations  to  national  interests.  The  free-trade  maxims 
and  example  of  England  are  so  often  and  so  zealously  com- 
mended to  our  adoption  and  imitation,  not  only  by  English- 
men, but  by  many  among  ourselves,  that  it  is  especially 
important  at  this  time,  that  we  should  rightly  understand 


8  THE    TARIFF   POLICY   OF 

her  tariff  policy,  the  exigencies  which  from  time  to  time 
determined  its  character,  and  the  interest  she  has  in  urging 
other  nations  to  follow  her  lead.  These  topics  I  will  endeavor 
to  present  as  they  appear  in  the  light  of  unquestionable 
facts. 


THE  TARIFF  POLICY  OF  ENGLAND. 

Great  Britain  derives  her  national  strength  mainly  from 
her  commerce ;  and  her  manufactures  almost  entirely  sustain 
that  commerce.  This  she  well  understands,  and  to  protect, 
encourage,  and  extend  her  manufactures  has  been  the  wise 
and  uniform  policy  of  her  statesmen  for  more  than  a  century  ; 
and  the  result  is  seen  in  a  manufacturing  prosperity  that  is 
without  a  parallel.  Although  national  advancement  may  be 
the  constant  object  of  a  nation,  the  methods  of  its  accom- 
plishment must  necessarily  conform  to  the  ever-changing 
conditions  incident  to  general  progress.  The  changes  which 
England's  tariff-policy  has  undergone,  from  time  to  time, 
exemplif}^  this  great  truth.  What  those  changes  have  been, 
and  their  relation  to  the  exigencies  which  determined  them, 
I  will  now  briefly  consider.  They  will  be  best  understood 
by  dividing  the  time  of  their  occurrence  into  three  epochs. 

The  first  epoch  covers  the  period  in  which  manufacturing 
was  mainly  carried  on  by  handicraft  methods.  During  this 
period,  the  English  possessed  no  superiority  as  a  manu- 
facturing people.  Lower  wages,  cheaper  living,  and  greater 
aptitude  for  handicraft  in  the  inhabitants  of  several  other 
countries,  enabled  their  manufacturers  to  undersell  the  manu- 
facturers of  England.  To  sustain  the  latter  under  this 
unequal  competition,  bounties  were  offered,  high  duties  were 
imposed;  and,  in  some  instances,  prohibition  was  enforced 
under  severe  penalties. 

"  By  the  8th  of  Elizabeth,  ch.  3,  the  exporter  of  sheep 
or  rams  was,  for  the  first  offence,  to  forfeit  all  his  goods 
for  ever,  to  suffer  a  year's  imprisonment,  and  then  have 
his  left  hand  cut  off,  in  a  market-town,  upon  a  market-day, 


ENGLAND   AND    THE   UNITED    STATES.  9 

to  be  there  nailed  up ;  and,  for  the  second  offence,  to  be 
adjudged,  a  felon,  and  to  suffer  death  accordingly." 

"  By  the  13th  and  14th  of  Charles  II.,  ch.  18,  the  exporta- 
tion of  wool  was  made  felony,  and  the  exporter  subjected  to 
the  same  penalties  and  forfeitures  as  a  felon."  1 

In  1700,  an  act  was  passed,  prohibiting  the  importation  of 
India  calicoes,  chintzes,  and  muslins  under  a  penalty,  upon 
the  seller  and  buyer,  of  £200.  In  1720,  it  was  enacted  that 
no  person  could  wear  a  printed  calico  without  the  payment 
of  £5  for  the  privilege,  while  the  seller  of  the  article  was 
mulcted  to  the  extent  of  £20.  Sixteen  }Tears  later,  the  Act 
of  1720  was  so  far  modified  as  to  legalize  the  use  of  mixed 
prints,  while  the  prohibition  against  using  calicoes  made 
wholly  of  cotton  remained  in  full  force.  This  state  of  things 
lasted  nearly  forty  years  longer.  In  1774,  a  little  more  than 
a  century  ago,  Parliament  passed  an  act  sanctioning  the 
manufacture  of  cotton,  and  making  it  lawful  to  use  or  wear 
any  new  fabric  made  wholly  of  that  material. 

The  second  epoch  embraces  the  period  so  remarkable  for 
the  invention  and  adoption  of  labor-saving  machine^,  and 
the  inauguration  and  development  of  the  "  factory  system " 
in  Great  Britain.  It  covers  nearly  all  the  great  mechanical 
improvements  which  began  with  the  inventions  of  Watt, 
Arkwright,  Hargraves,  Crompton,  and  Cartwright.  The 
steam-engine,  the  spinning-jenny,  the  spinning-frame,  the 
carding-machine,  and  the  power-loom  ushered  in  a  new  era 
in  manufacture,  and  laid  the  foundation  of  those  great 
industries  which  constitute  the  basis  of  England's  pros- 
perity, and  control  as  well  as  characterize  her  social  and 
political  organizations.  Perceiving  early  the  great  value  and 
importance  of  these  inventions  and  improvements,  England 
sought  to  confine  their  use  to  her  own  people,  and  to  that 
end  enacted  laws  prohibiting,  under  heavy  penalties,  the 
exportation  of  machinery,  and  the  emigration  of  skilled  arti- 
sans. On  machinery  for  the  manufacture  of  flax,  the  export 
prohibition  remained  in  force  as  late  as  1842. 

l  Smith's  "  Wealth  of  Nations,"  vol.  ii.  p.  121. 


10  THE   TARIFF   POLICY   OF 

I  come  now  to  the  third  epoch,  which  begins  with  the 
tariff-reform  movement  in  England,  and  comes  down  to  the 
present  time.  It  is  memorable  as  the  period  in  which  England 
reversed  her  tariff-policy.  Up  to  the  beginning  of  this  epoch, 
it  is  certain  that,  in  order  to  establish  and  develop  her  manu- 
factures, she  refused  no  form  of  aid  and  protection  which  it 
was  in  the  power  of  government  to  grant.  When  foreign 
productions  encroached  on  the  home  market,  they  were 
excluded  by  actual  prohibition,  or  by  exorbitant  duties  of 
equivalent  effect.  Whenever  an  article  of  English  manu- 
facture (subject,  however,  to  internal  taxes)  was  struggling 
to  get  a  foothold  in  a  foreign  market,  drawbacks  were 
allowed ;  while,  in  cases  of  special  need,  an  export  bounty 
was  paid.  To  prevent  rival  nations  from  sharing  in  the  great 
advantages  which  she  derived  from  improved  processes  and 
labor-saving  machinery,  tshe  guarded  with  jealous  care  every 
invention  and  discovery. 

Under  this  rigid  and  discriminating  system  of  protection, 
England  so  increased  her  productive  power,  as,  at  length,  to 
surpass  all  other  countries,  both  in  the  quantity  and'  in  the 
cheapness  of  her  manufactures,  excepting  those  of  silk.    This 
object  accomplished,  it  is  very  evident  that  her  interests  and 
her   relations  were    materially  changed.     But  why,  just  at 
this  crisis  in  her  career,  did  the  nation,  which  had  so  long 
been  a  conspicuous  adherent  of  the  protective  policy,  become 
all  at  once  the  advocate  of  free  trade  ?     The  answer  to  this 
interrogatory  is  to  be  found,  not  in  any  feeling  of  confidence  \ 
England's   statesmen   had   in   the  free-trade   theory, — as  it 
shall  show  in   another  part  of  this  discussion,  —  but  in  the' 
exigencies  of  her  situation. 

Her   population   had    attained   a  density  fur   beyond   the 

capacity  of   her   soil    to    sustain.     Mr.  Villiers,   urging,    in 

1844,  the  repeal  of  the  corn  laws,  said  :  "  For  twenty  years 

past,   we    have    been    constantly  and   largely  dependent  on 

.other   countries  for  our  supplies  of   corn."1     Pressing   the 


1  Corn,  in  England,  comprehends  all  the  cereal  grains ;   but  means  espe- 
cially wheat,  rye,  oats,  and  barley. 


ENGLAND   AND    THE   UNITED   STATES.  11 

same  topic  a  year  later,  he  declared :  "  The  time  is  come 
when  every  individual  soul  born  in  Great  Britain,  must  look 
to  manufactures,  or  at  least  to  something  else  than  agri- 
culture, for  the  means  of  living."  *  Said  Mr.  Cobden,  in 
debate  on  the  corn  laws :  u  The  unskilled  laboring  classes 
are  in  a  condition  which  is  permanently  disagreeable  to  the 
government.  Look  at  Ireland,  where  five  millions  of  people 
never  touch  wheaten  bread,  —  where  three-fourths  of  the 
people  live  on  roots.  In  the  Scotch  Highlands,  and  in  the 
midland  counties  of  England,  there  are  similar  evidences  of 
want."  2 

Concurrent  with  this  growing  dependence  of  England  on 
other  countries  for  bread,  the  growth  of  manufactures  else- 
where was  endangering  the  expansion  of  her  commerce. 
Rival  nations  had  adopted  the  machinery  and  the  factory 
system  which  she  had  vainly  attempted  to  monopolize,  and 
were  not  only  largely  supplying  their  own  people  with  manu- 
factures, but  were  nearly  abreast  with  her  in  foreign  mar- 
kets. To  maintain  her  superiority  as  a  manufacturing  nation, 
and  thereby  extend  her  commerce,  some  great  change,  which 
should  reduce  the  cost  of  her  manufactures,  and  enlarge  the 
area  for  their  distribution,  was  an  evident  and  imperious 
necessity. 

Absolute  protection  had  done  its  work.  The  duties  on  her 
principal  manufactures  —  excepting  those  of  silk  —  had  be- 
come virtually  inoperative,  as  shown  by  the  fact  that,  at  that 
time,  her  command  of  the  home  market  was  such  that,  for 
several  years  after  they  were  admitted  free  of  duty,  her  im- 
ports of  manufactures  —  other  than  those  of  silk  —  did  not 
materially  increase.3  The  only  course  open  to  her,  so  far 


1  Hansard,  vol.  Ixxxi.,  3d  series,  p.  13G3.  2  Ibid.  353. 

3  The  total  value  of  England's  imports  of  iron,  and  of  manufactures  of  cot- 
ton, wool,  and  flax,  in  1856,  ten  years  after  the  duties  on  them  were  repealed,  was 
respectively  as  follows  :  — 

Iron £775,908 

Manufactures  of  cotton 664,001 

„  „  wool 1,444,162 

„  flax 97,541 


12  THE   TARIFF   POLICY   OF 

as  we  can  see,  was  to  admit  raw  materials  free ;  to  di- 
minish the  cost  of  living  by  the  free  admission  of  corn 
(breads tuffs),  and  thereby  render  the  continuance  of  low 
wages  compatible  with  subsistence  ;  and  to  induce  other 
nations,  if  she  could,  to  open  their  markets  to  the  sale  of 
her  productions.  This  constituted  the  sum  and  substance 
of  England's  free-trade  programme.  I  will  now  show  how 
this  programme  has  been  carried  out,  and  the  results  it  has 
accomplished. 


THE  FREE- TRADE   ACTS   OF  ENGLAND  AND  THEIR 
EFFECTS. 

The  several  tariff  acts  which  comprise  the  principal  free- 
trade  measures  of  England  are  as  follows,  viz. :  The  acts  of 
Sir  Robert  Peel  in  1842  and  1845,  his  great  act  repealing  the 
corn  laws  in  1846,  and  the  act  of  Mr.  Gladstone  in  1853. 
The  bearing  which  these  acts  severally  had  on  the  revenue, 
and,  inferentially,  on  the  commerce  of  Great  Britain,  is 
clearly  shown  by  table  A,  which  was  compiled  from  her  cus- 
tom-house records.  It  gives  the  gross  amount  of  customs 
duties  derived  from  each  of  the  principal  articles  imported, 
distinguishing  the  annual  receipts  in  each  of  the  years  in 
which  the  free-trade  measures  were  respectively  enacted,  and 
the  mean, annual  receipts  in  a  series  of  years  before  and  after 
each  enactment.  This  record  begins  four  years  before  the 
first  important  measure  of  reform,  and  comes  down  six  years 
this  side  of  its  last  important  act.  It  shows  that,  from  1838 
to  1859  inclusive,  England  derived  over  ninety  per  cent  of 
her  customs  revenue  from  sixteen  articles,  and  that  the 
amount  received  from  all  other  articles  subject  to  duty  was 
less  than  nine  per  cent.  The  near  approach  to  uniformity  in 
the  sources,  and  the  annual  amount  of  revenue  raised  during 
those  twenty-two  years,  under  the  several  free-trade  acts,  is 
very  remarkable. 


ENGLAND   AND   THE   UNITED   STATES. 


13 


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14  THE   TARIFF   POLICY   OF 

In  1845,  "by  command  of  Her  Majesty,"  an  expository 
statement 1  was  prepared  and  presented  to  Parliament,  show- 
ing the  effect  of  Peel's  tariff  act  of  1842  on  the  imports  of 
Great  Britain,  the  imports  being  classified  according  to  their 
relation  to  the  questions  of  free  trade  and  protection.  The 
classification  is  as  follows  :  — 

ARTICLES  IN  A  RAW  STATE  TO  BE  USED  IN  MANUFACTURE. 
ARTICLES  PARTIALLY  MANUFACTURED. 
ARTICLES  WHOLLY  MANUFACTURED. 

ARTICLES  FOR  FOOD,  INCLUDING  CONDIMENTS  AND  STIMULANTS. 
ARTICLES  NOT   PROPERLY  BELONGING   TO  ANY  OF   THE   FOREGO- 
ING HEADS. 

A  summary  of  the  Expository  Statement  is  given  in 

TABLE  B. 


CLASSES  OF  IMPORTS. 

Mean  Annual 
Amount  of 
Duties  collected 

in  the  Two 

Years  before,  the 
Ta  rift'  of  1842. 

Mean  Annual 
Amount  of 
Duties  col  lect'd 
in  the  Two 
Years  after  the 
Tariff  of  1842. 

Excess  col- 
lected in  the 
Two  Years 
before  the 
Tariff  of 
1842. 

Excess  col- 
lected in  the 
Two  Years 
after  the 
Tariff  of 
1842. 

Articles  in  a  Raw  State  to  be 
used  in  Manufactures     . 

Dollars. 

10,975,400 

Dollars. 
7,074,205 

Dollars. 
3,901,195 

Dollars. 

Articles  partially  manufact'd 

5  956  145 

3  °57  440 

1,998  705 

Articles  wholly  manufactured 
Articles  for  Food,  &c.    . 

2,397,850 
93  438  085 

2,377,0-25 
100  384  °10 

20,225 

6  946  1°5 

Articles  not  properly  belong- 
ing to  any  of  the  foregoing 
heads  . 

1,119  990 

510  950 

609  040 

Total  

113  187  470 

113  604  430 

6  529  165 

6  946  1°5 

By  an  examination  of  this  table,  it  will  be  seen  that  the 
principal  effect  of  the  free-trade  act  of  1842,  was  to  increase 
the  total  amount  of  duties  collected,  nearly  half  a  million 
dollars,  and  to  take  about  six  millions  of  dollars  from  raw 
materials  and  articles  partially  manufactured,  and  add  a  sim- 
ilar amount  to  articles  for  food. 


1  Accounts  and  Papers  of  the  British  Parliament  for  the  year  1845,  vol. 
xlvi.  pp.  100-287. 


ENGLAND   AND   THE   UNITED    STATES. 


15 


To  show  the  bearing  which  the  several  free-trade  acts  — 
viz.,  the  acts  of  1842,  1845,1846,  and  1853  — had  collectively 
on  the  same  classes  of  imports,  I  present  table  C,  which  gives 
the  amount  of  duties  collected  on  each  class  respectively,  in 
the  ye-ar  1839,  and  in  the  year  1859. 

TABLE  C. 


CLASSES  OP  IMPORTS. 

Net  Amount  of 
Duty  collected 
in  tlie  Year 
ending 
Jan.  5,  1839. 

Net  Amount  of 
Duty  collected 
in  the  Year 
ending 
Dec.  31,  1859. 

Excess  in 
1839. 

Excess  in 
1859. 

Articles  in  a  Raw  State  to  be 
used  in  Manufactures     . 

Dollars. 
10,519,115 

Dollars. 
1,528,395 

Dollars. 
8,990,720 

Dollars. 

Articles  partially  inanufact'd 

5,  '220,  795 

2,076,495 

3,144,300 

Articles  wholly  manufactured 

2  39(5,260 

3,032,575 

636  315 

Articles  for  Food,  &c.  . 

91,518,705 

116,746,050 

25  227  955 

Articles  not  properly  belong- 
ing to  any  of  the  foregoing 
heads             •                     • 

949  795 

139  120 

810  675 

Total        .... 

110  604  760 

103  509  635 

1°  945  695 

95  863  570 

From  this  table  it  appears  that  the  combined  effect  of  all 
these  free-trade  acts  up  to  1859,  was  to  increase  the  total  annual 
amount  of  duties  collected,  twelve  millions  of  dollars;  to  in- 
crease the  amount  collected  on  articles  wholly  manufactured, 
six  hundred  thousand  dollars,1  and  on  articles  for  food,  twenty- 
jive  millions  of  dollars  ;  and  to  diminish  the  amount  collected 
on  raw  materials,  nearly  nine  millions  of  dollars;  and  on 
articles  partially  manufactured  three  millions  of  dollars. 

The  modifications  which  have  been  made  in  the  British 
tariff,  since  1859,  do  not  materially  change  its  character,  as 
they  relate  mainly  to  the  duties  on  the  sixteen  articles  speci- 
fied in  Table  A. 

The  greatest  benefit  which  England  has  derived  from  her 
tariff-reform  measures,  does  not  appear  in  the  annual  amount 


1  The  duties  on  iron,  and  on  manufactures  of  cotton,  wool,  and  flax,  were 
repealed  in  1846  ;  but  on  manufactures  of  silk,  paper,  and  leather,  and  on  sundry 
minor  articles  of  manufacture,  duties  were  retained  till  after  1859. 


16  THE    TARIFF    POLICY    OF 

of  her  customs  revenue,  for  that,  as  already  shown,  has  been 
remarkably  uniform.  This  benefit  was  largely  prospective, 
and  is  to  be  seen  in  its  relation  to  her  imports  of  raw  mate- 
rials and  of  breadstuff's. 

The  amount  of  duties  collected  on  raw  materials  to  be 
used  in  manufacture,  in  1839,  was  over  ten  millions  of  dollars.1 

The  rates  of  duties  that  then  prevailed,  applied  to  the 
amount  of  raw  materials  now  consumed  in  her  vast  manu- 
facture, would  amount  annually  to  a  very  large  sum.  On 
cotton  alone,  it  would  amount  to  eight  millions  of  dollars. 
Great  Britain  produces  only  forty  per  cent  of  the  wheat  and 
wheat-meal  which  she  consumes.2  In  1815,  she  imported 
corn  (breadstuffs)  to  the  value  of  two  hundred  and  sixty-five 
millions  of  dollars?  Had  the  "sliding  scale"  of  duties  been 
continued,  with  corn  at  the  prices  which  prevailed  three 
years  prior  to  its  repeal,  her  bread-tax  that  year  would  have 
amounted  to  fifty-three  millions  of  dollars. 

But  to  understand  fully  the  nature  and  necessity  of  the\ 
reform  of  Peel  and  Gladstone,  we  must  take  into  view  the  ] 
fact  that  the  details  and  provisions  of  the  British  tariff  had  / 
become  exceedingly  numerous,  complicated,  and  inconsistent. 
It  contained  many  actual  prohibitions,  and  many  duties  so 
high  as  to  be,  in  fact,  prohibitory.  In  the  progress  of  manu- 
factures and  trade,  not  a  few  of  its  imposts  had  become 
entirety  inoperative.  It  had  grown  up,  as  it  were,  by  chance, 
to  meet  from  time  to  time  the  exigencies  of  war  and  the 
demands  of  finance,  until  it  had  become  a  vast  agglomeration 
of  unintelligible  impositions.  Says  Mr.  Tooke  :  "  The  whole 
commercial  system  was  incumbered,  disfigured,  and  shackled 
by  innumerable,  vexatious,  obstructive,  and  impolitic  restric- 
tions." To  eliminate  from  such  a  mass  what  was  positively 
injurious,  or  absolutely  useless,  and  to  simplify  and  to  classify 
the  whole,  was  a  work  of  necessity  and  mercy,  which,  by 

1  See  Table  B,  p.  14. 

2  See  Twentieth  Report  of  the  Commissioners  of  Her  Majesty's  Customs, 
p.  10. 

3  See  Twenty-third  number,  Statistical  Abstract  for  the  United  Kingdom, 
p.  33. 


ENGLAND    AND    THE    UNITED   STATES.  17 

relieving  the  custom-house,  gave  needed  facilities  to  com- 
merce. The  common-sense  act  which  erased  from  the  statute- 
book  so  many  petty  and  annoying  details,  made  no  little 
show  of  reform.  Yet,  so  far  as  those  details  were  concerned, 
it  had  really  no  bearing  on  the  great  questions  of  free  trade 
and  protection  ;  more  than  nine-tenths  of  the  entire  customs 
receipts  having  been  derived,  as  already  shown,  from  sixteen 
articles. 

The  facts  I  have  adduced,  show,  I  think,  that  in  economic 
and  fiscal  discussions,  during  the  past  thirty  years,  a  greater 
prominence  has  been  given  to  the  free-trade  measures  of 
England  than  their  results  will  justify.  The  influence  of 
these  measures  in  extending  British  commerce  has,  also,  been 
much  overestimated.  It  is  true  that,  of  late  years,  the 
increase  of  British  trade  has  been  rapid  and  striking.  But 
causes  of  general  application,  which  are  to  be  found  outside 
of  tariff  laws,  have  contributed  largely  to  this  result.  Promi- 
nent among  those  causes,  are  the  influence  of  improved 
machinery  and  of  the  applied  sciences,  and  the  greatly 
increased  supply  of  gold. 

This  is  pre-eminently  an  age  of  progress.  Useful  inven- 
tions in  the  mechanic  arts,  and  important  discoveries  in 
science,  are  of  almost  daily  occurrence.  Countless  improve- 
ments in  existing  machines,  and  in  the  methods  and  processes 
of  production,  are  continually  enlarging  the  ability  to  pro- 
duce,—  multiplying  articles  of  consumption,  and  thus,  of 
necessity,  swelling  the  great  currents  of  trade. 

The  annual  produce  of  gold,  which,  prior  to  1848,  was 
fifty  millions  of  dollars,  has,  since  1853,  amounted  in  some 
years  to  one  hundred  and  fifty  millions  of  dollars.  "  The 
effect  of  this  triple  supply  of  gold,"  says  Mr.  Tooke,  "  has 
been  to  set  in  motion  and  sustain  a  vast  and  increasing  num- 
ber of  causes,  all  conducing  to  augment  the  real  wealth  and 
resources  of  the  world,  by  stimulating  trade,  enterprise,  dis- 
covery, and  production."  That  the  late  increase  of  Great 
Britain's  trade  is  not  due,  in  a  controlling  degree,  to  her 
free-trade  measures,  is  conclusively  shown  by  the  fact  that 
she  is  not  alone  in  the  enjoyment  of  an  increasing  commerce. 


18 


THE   TARIFF   POLICY   OF 


The  foreign  trade  of  Russia  and  of  the  United  States 
increased,  during  the  past  ten  years,  under  the  policy  of 
protection,  in  a  greater  ratio  than  that  of  Great  Britain 
under  the  policy  of  free-trade ;  and,  also,  in  a  greater  ratio 
than  that  of  France,  which  the  English  claim  as  a  free-trade 
ally. 

The  following  comparative  Table,  D,  shows  the  percentage 
of  increase  (in  round  numbers)  in  the  imports  and  the  exports 
of  merchandise  of  each  of  the  countries  just  mentioned, 
during  the  ten  years  ending  1875  ;  the  mean  amount  of  trade 
in  1866  and  1867,  and  the  mean  amount  of  trade  in  1874 
and  1875,  being  taken  as  the  basis  of  computation. 

TABLE  D. 


COUNTRIES    COMPARED. 

Increase  in  Imports. 

Increase  in  Exports. 

104  per  cent. 

81  per  cent. 

United  States2              .     . 

33 

72 

Great  Britain  *                     ... 

30    , 

25 

France  1 

13 

16 

Those  who  are  accustomed  so  inconsiderately  and  flip- 
pantly to  denounce  our  tariff  as  prohibitory  and  destructive 
of  commerce  would  do  well  to  ponder  these  facts. 


THE   TARIFF  POLICY  OF   THE   UNITED  STATES,  AND  ITS 
RELATION  TO  THAT  OF  ENGLAND. 

As  the  fitness  of  our  tariff  policy  depends  very  much  on 
the  physical  condition  of  the  country,  a  glance  at  our  indige- 
nous resources,  and  at  what  we  have  done  in  the  way  of  their 
development,  may  not  be  out  of  place. 

1  See  third  number  of  England's  Statistical  Abstract,  for  the  principal  for- 
eign countries,  pp.  32-36. 

2  See  Quarterly  Report  (No.  1)  of  the  Chief  of  the  Bureau  of  Statistics, 
p.  101.     Our  exceptionally  large  exports  in  1874  and  1875,  probably  raised  our 
percentage  of  increase  above  its  normal  rate. 


ENGLAND   AND  THE  UNITED   STATES.  19 

Spanning  the  continent,  with  the  Atlantic  Ocean  on  one 
side  and  the  almost  boundless  Pacific  on  the  other,  our  Union 
spreads,  and  stretches  its  magnificent  zone  of  more  than  twenty 
degrees  in  latitude  and  nearly  three  thousand  miles  in  length. 
In  extent  of  coast,  whether  of  sea,  lake,  or  gulf ;  in  the  num- 
ber and  value  of  harbors  ;  and  in  the  means  of  inland  naviga- 
tion, whether  of  sound,  lake,  or  river,  —  what  portion  of  the 
globe  surpasses  ours  ?  An  immense  area  of  rich  and  varied 
soil,  lying  under  a  wide  range  of  climate,  enables  us  to  raise 
in  abundance  and  with  certainty  all  the  most  valued  products 
of  the  temperate  zones.  Besides  the  wealth  of  our  vast  and 
well-timbered  forests,  and  all  the  teeming  acres  which  are 
now  under  cultivation,  we  have  yet  in  reserve  a  breadth  of 
virgin  soil  sufficient  to  give  employment  and  sustenance  to 
many-fold  our  present  population.  Nor  are  our  riches  all  on 
the  surface.  In  mines  and  placers  of  gold,  only  one  nation 
can  compete  with  us.  Of  silver,  copper,  lead,  zinc,  and 
mercury,  we  have  large  supplies ;  while  iron  (more  valuable 
than  all  the  rest)  is  widely  diffused,  and  inexhaustible  in 
quantity.  But  it  is  in  the  almost  incredible  richness  of  our 
coal  deposits  —  that  mineral  which  has  become  so  essential 
to  individual  comfort,  to  manufacturing  success,  to  swift  loco- 
motion on  land  or  water,  to  prosperity  in  peace,  to  efficiency 
in  war,  and,  indeed,  to  all  true  national  wealth  and  power  — 
that  we  leave  behind  at  an  immeasurable  distance  every  other 
nation.  We  have  done  much  to  use  these  gifts  of  Nature,  and 
much,  also,  in  preparation  for  their  future  utilization.  We 
have  deepened  and  protected  the  entrances  to  OUT  harbors, 
and  made  our  rivers  more  navigable.  In  number  and  length 
of  railways,  no  country  vies  with  ours.  Mountain  ranges  of 
formidable  height,  and  vast  plains  which  once  seemed  of 
interminable  length,  are  now  traversed  easily  and  quickly  on 
the  iron  track.  More  quickly  still,  the  telegraphic  wire  con- 
veys over  every  part  of  our  great  republic  the  orders  of  gov- 
ernment and  the  messages  of  business  ;  so  that  parts  of  the 
country  once  widely  separated  in  thought  as  well  as  space  are 
now,  for  all  purposes  of  intercourse,  placed,  as  it  were,  side 
by  side. 


20  THE   TARIFF   POLICY   OF 

In  manufacturing,  we  have  made  a  fair  start.  Much  of  the 
raw  material  which  we  extract  from  the  earth,  or  raise  on  its 
surface,  —  material  which  may  be  increased  to  any  extent,  — 
is  converted,  by  skilful  hands  arid  labor-saving  machinery, 
into  forms  and  fabrics  of  utility  and  beauty.  In  the  inven- 
tion, the  construction,  and  the  use  of  mechanism,  the  Ameri- 
cans are  allowed  to  show  an  aptness  equal,  at  least,  to  that  of 
other  nations.  Nowhere  else  is  this  faculty  turned  to  more 
general  or  to  more  profitable  account.  Not  only  in  manu- 
facturing, but  in  agriculture  and  in  almost  every  kind  of 
industrial  art,  the  employment  of  labor-saving  machines  and 
implements  multiplies  our  numerical  force,  and  vastly  aug- 
ments our  productive  power.  The  result  is  seen  in  the  im- 
mense value  of  the  annual  productions  of  the  United  States, 
which  now  exceeds  six  thousand  millions  of  dollars.  That  our 
industrial  achievements  and  our  present  large  producing 
power  are  in  a  great  measure  due  to  the  varied  industries 
which  our  tariff  policy,  vacillating  as  it  has  been,  has  ren- 
dered possible,  no  one,  I  think,  who  is  familiar  with  the 
essential  conditions  of  industrial  progress  will  deny.  The 
tariff  acts  of  the  United  States  have  been  numerous ;  and, 
while  revenue  has  been  their  primary  object,  they  have  also, 
for  half  a  century,  been  framed  with  more  or  less  regard  to 
the  protection  of  American  industry.  Their  tariff  policy, 
therefore,  may  be  regarded,  in  the  main,  as  a  protective 
policy.  As  yet,  however,  we  have  failed  to  establish,  in  this 
important  department  of  national  economy,  any  policy  of 
action  so  settled  and  uniform  as  to  furnish  our  manufacturers 
with  a  safe  basis  of  faith  and  practical  dependence. 

When  our  customs  tariff  again  undergoes  revision,  it  is  to 
be  hoped  that  Congress  will  adjust  its  provisions,  not  in  con- 
formity with  the  precepts  of  theorists,  to  whatever  school  of 
economists  they  may  belong,  but  in  conformity  with  our  own 
needs  and  requirements.  The  aim  should  be  to  establish  a 
national  tariff  policy,  which  shall  be  regarded  as  permanent, 
and  so  to  frame  its  provisions  as  to  promote  the  use  and 
development  of  our  vast  national  resources  ;  and  to  secure,  so 


ENGLAND   AND   THE   UNITED   STATES. 


21 


far  as  it  depends  on  legislation,  the  highest  attainable  pros- 
perity to  all  sections  of  the  country.  Obvious  as  this  patri- 
otic duty  is,  there  are  many  among  us,  who,  in  disregard  of 
national  interests  and  requirements,  would  have  us  adopt 
England's  tariff  as  our  model ;  and,  illogical  as  it  may  seem, 
reproduce  the  same  arguments  for  its  adoption  here  that  were 
used  in  England  for  its  adoption  there,  under  widely  different 
circumstances.  That  we  can  learn  much  from  her  long  and 
varied  experience  is  no  doubt  true  ;  but  to  follow  her  exam- 
ple, except  in  so  far  as  the  conditions  of  the  two  countries  are 
similar,  would  be  unwise.  Rightly  to  understand  the  relation 
which  our  tariff  sustains  to  that  of  England,  we  must  take 
into  view  the  statistical  facts  contained  in  the  folio  wing  series 
of  comparative  tables  :  — 

Table  E  shows  the  value  of  the  import  trade  of  the  two 
countries,  respectively,  in  the  year  1875  ;  the  articles  being 
classed  in  the  manner  adopted  in  the  Expository  Statement 
before  mentioned. 

TABLE  E. 


ARTICLES. 

Great  Britain  * 
imported 

United  States  2 
imported 

Articles  in  a  Raw  State  to  be 
used  in  Manufacture 
Articles  partially  manufactured 
Articles  wholly  manufactured    . 
Articles  for  Food,  including  con- 
diments and  stimulants      .     . 
Articles  not  properly  belonging 
to  any  of  the  foregoing  heads 

Dollars. 
695,237,440 
112,841,330 
197,760,880 

811,374,750 
22,483,485 

Dollars. 
68,260,780 
35,124,760 
197,175,421 

208,345,178 
38,143,978 

Total     

1  869  697  885 

547  050  117 

1  See  Twentieth  Report  of  the  Commissioners  of  her  Majesty's  Customs, 
p.  29. 

2  The  figures  in  this  column  were  compiled  from  the  Report  of  the  Chief  of 
the  Bureau  of  Statistics  on  Commerce  and  Navigation,  for  1875.     1  desire  here 
to  express  my  thanks  to  Dr.  Edward  Young,  for  his  courtesy  in  sending  me 
that  Report,  and  other  official  documents  which  I  have  used  in  the  preparation 
of  this  work. 


22 


THE   TARIFF   POLICY   OF 


The  amount  of  revenue  which  each  country  respectively 
derived  from  customs  duties,  and  from  internal  taxes,  in  the 
year  1875,  is  given  in 

TABLE  F. 


BRANCHES  OF  REVENUE. 

Great  Britain. 

United  States. 

Derived  from  Customs  Duties    . 

Dollars. 
100,027,165 
189,009,305 

Dollars. 

154,554,982 
110,545,154 

Total     

289,036,470 

265,100,136 

Table  G  shows  the  classes  of  articles  from  which  the  two 
countries,  respectively,  derived  their  customs  revenue  ;  the 
articles  being  classed  as  in  Table  E. 

TABLE  G. 


ARTICLES. 

Great  Britain.1 

United  States.* 

Derived  from  Articles  in  a  Raw 
State,  to  be  used  in  Manf  'ure 

Dollars. 

Dollars. 
6,478,324 

Articles  partially  manufactured 

4,819,495 

Articles  wholly  manufactured 

82,168,214 

Articles  for  Food,  including  con- 
diments and  stimulants 
Articles  not  properly  belonging 
to  any  of  the  foregoing  heads 

100,027,165 

57,294,462 
3,794,487 

Total     

100  027,165 

154,554,982 

The  sources  from  which  each  country  derived  its  internal 
revenue  is  shown  in  Table  H. 


1  See  Twentieth  Report  of  the  Commissioners  of  her  Majesty's  Customs, 
p.  98. 

2  The  figures  in  this  column  were  compiled  from  the  Report  of  the  Chief  of 
the  Bureau  of  Statistics  on  Commerce  and  Navigation,  for  1875. 


ENGLAND   AND   THE  UNITED   STATES.  23 

TABLE  H. 


SOURCES. 

Great  Britain.1 

United  States.' 

Derived  from  Spirits    .... 
Malt  and  Fermented  Liquors      . 
Tobacco                    

Dollars. 

74,478,840 
38,733,700 

Dollars. 
52,081,991 
9,144,004 
37,303,461 

52  738  615 

6,557,229 

Licenses 

17  498  780 

l^niiks  and  Bankers      .... 

4,097,248 

5,559,340 

1,361,221 

Total     .          

189,009,305 

110,545,154 

We  have  now  before  us  the  value  of  the  imports  of  Great 
Britain  and  of  the  United  States,  in  1875,  classified  according 
to  their  bearing  on  the  questions  of  free-trade  and  protection ; 
the  amount  of  revenue  which  each  country  raised  by  customs 
duties  and  by  internal  taxes ;  and  the  articles  and  sources 
from  which  each  branch  of  revenue  was  respectively  derived. 
In  the  light  of  these  and  other  facts  already  adduced,  I  will 
endeavor  to  show  wherein  we  can,  and  wherein  we  cannot, 
wisely  conform  our  tariff  to  that  of  England. 

IMPORTS  OF  THE  Two  COUNTRIES.  —  From  Table  E, 
p.  21,  it  appears  that,  in  1875,  Great  Britain  imported  mer- 
chandise to  the  value  of  one  thousand  eight  hundred  and  sixty- 
nine  million  dollars ;  and  the  United  States,  to  the  value  of 
only  five  hundred  and  forty-seven  million  dollars. 

The  greater  value  of  the  foreign  trade  of  Great  Britain  is 
thought  by  many  to  place  her  in  a  position  of  relative  advan- 
tage.    On  the  contrary,  it  is  the  result  of  a  position  of  rela-^^.^ 
tive  disadvantage.     Nations  are  independent  and  prosperous  T/ 
in  proportion  as  they  have  within  themselves  the  means  of  I   . 
subsistence.     In  this  view,  Great  Britain  is  the  most  depend-/ 
ent,  and  the  United  States  the  most  independent,  of  all  the 
great  nations  of  the  earth.     For  us,  foreign  trade  is  certainly 


1  See  Statistical  Abstract  for  the  United  Kingdom,  23cl  number,  p.  9. 

2  See  Report  of  the  Commissioner  of  Internal  Revenue,  1870,  p.  163. 


24  THE    TARIFF   POLICY   OF 

desirable,  so  far  as  it  results  from  national  growth  arid  devel- 
opment ;  but,  for  Great  Britain,  it  is  an  absolute  necessity.  To 
subsist  her  population,  she  must  annually  import  articles  for 
food  to  the  value  of  over  eight  hundred  million  dollars ;  and, 
to  pay  for  these  articles,  she  must  also  import  raw  materials 
to  be  used  in  manufacture  to  the  value  of  nearly  seven  hun- 
dred million  dollars,  and  annually  sell  her  manufactured  pro- 
ductions in  foreign  markets  to  the  value  of  twelve  hundred 
million  dollars.  Does  any  American  covet  a  foreign  trade 
resting  on  a  basis  of  such  international  dependence  ?  To 
maintain  that  commercial  regulations,  which  are  suited  to  the 
needs  of  dependent  Britain,  are  alike  applicable  to  independ- 
ent America,  is  the  height  of  absurdity. 

REVENUE  OF  THE  Two  COUNTRIES.  —  Table  F,  p.  22, 
shows  that  the  amount  of  revenue  which  Great  Britain 
derived  in  1875  from  customs  duties  and  internal  taxes  was 
two  hundred  and  eighty-nine  million  dollars,  and  that  the 
amount  which  the  United  States  derived  from  those  branches 
was  two  hundred  and  sixty-five  millions  of  dollars  ;  and  that, 
while  our  customs  revenue  was  fifty-four  millions  of  dollars 
more  than  that  of  Great  Britain,  our  internal  revenue  was 
seventy-eight  millions  of  dollars  less.  But,  from  both  branches 
together,  she  raised  twenty-four  millions  of  dollars  more  than 
we  did. 

By  an  examination  of  Tables  G  and  H,  p.  22,  23,  consider- 
able disparity  will  be  seen  to  exist  in  the  articles  and  sources 
from  which  the  two  countries  respectively  derive  their  customs 
and  their  internal  revenue.  In  all  that  has  been  said  in  advo- 
cacy of  our  adopting  England's  customs  tariff,  her  internal 
tax  laws  are  rarely  mentioned.  There  is  no  more  reason  why 
we  should  unqualifiedly  adopt  the  one  than  the  other. 

To  show  more  fully  the  relation  which  our  tariff  sustains  to 
that  of  England,  I  will  now  present  the  subject  in  conformity 
with  the  classification  of  imports  in  the  expository  statement 
before  explained  ;  beginning,  for  convenience,  with 

DUTIES  ON  ARTICLES  FOR  FOOD.  —  It  is  a  noticeable 
fact,  that  the  whole  of  the  revenue  which  Great  Britain 


ENGLAND   AND   THE   UNITED    STATES.  25 

derives  from  customs,  and  sixty  per  cent  of  that  which  she 
derives  from  excise,  is  a  tax  on  articles  for  food.  As  to 
the  bearing  which  such  a  tax  has  on  the  people,  the  Com- 
missioners of  her  Majesty's  Customs,  in  their  Twentieth  Re- 
port, say,  "  It  has  always  been  held  by  the  best  authorities 
on  questions  relating  to  the  incidence  of  taxation,  that  the 
bulk  of  the  revenue  from  customs,  of  which  almost  the  whole 
is  derived  from  tobacco,  spirits,  tea,  dried  fruit,  coffee,  and 
cocoa,  is  paid  by  that  class  of  the  population  which  is  depend- 
ent upon  weekly  wages,  —  comprising,  as  it  does,  the  great 
majority  ;  for  wine,  consumed  principally  by  a  richer  class, 
contributes  less  than  nine  per  cent  of  the  whole."  What  the 
commissioners  say  in  regard  to  the  effect  on  the  people  of 
customs  duties  on  articles  for  food,  is  also  true  in  regard  to 
excise  duties  on  these  articles.  Therefore,  of  the  taxes,  nine- 
tenths  of  which  are  paid  by  that  class  of  the  population  which 
is  dependent  upon  weekly  wages,  Great  Britain  raises  two  hun- 
dred and  thirteen  million  dollars,  and  the  United  States  only  one 
hundred  and  fifty-five  million  dollars  ;  that  is  to  say,  she  raises 
fifty-eight  million  dollars  more  than  we  do.  So  far,  then,  as  it 
relates  to  articles  for  food,  the  English  revenue  system  con- 
tains nothing  which  suggests  any  improvement  in  our  own. 

DUTIES  ON  RAW  MATERIALS.  —  Again  recurring  to  Table 
E,  p.  21,  it  will  be  seen  that,  in  1875,  Great  Britain  imported 
raw  materials  to  be  used  in  manufacture  to  the  value  of  six 
hundred  and  ninety-five  million  dollars,  and  the  United  States 
to  the  value  of  only  sixty-eight  million  dollars  ;  the  excess  in 
favor  of  Great  Britain  being  six  hundred  and  twenty-seven 
million  dollars.  As  already  shown,  the  English  tariff  admits 
this  class  of  articles  free  of  duty.  Although  our  tariff  has 
a  large  free  list,  —  larger,  I  think,  than  is  generally  sup- 
posed, —  it  imposes  on  certain  raw  materials  duties,  which, 
in  1875,  amounted  in  the  aggregate  to  six  million  four  hun- 
dred and  seventy-eight  thousand  dollars. 

The  expediency  of  a  nation  imposing  customs  duties  on 
raw  materials  depends  largely  on  the  sources  of  its  prosperity. 
For  England,  whose  indigenous  resources  are  limited,  and 


26  THE   TARIFF   POLICY   OF 

whose  prosperity  is  largely  dependent  on  manufacturing  from 
imported  raw  materials,  to  impose  customs  duties  on  those 
raw  materials  would  be  an  act  of  folly.  With  the  United 
States,  the  case  is  quite  different.  Their  indigenous  re- 
sources are  almost  boundless,  and  their  highest  prosperity  is 
to  be  derived  from  the  utilization  of  these  resources.  In  ac- 
complishing this  result,  if  customs  duties  are  necessary  to 
enable  their  producers  of  raw  materials  to  compete  success- 
fully with  similar  producers  in  other  countries,  it  is  wise 
policy  to  impose  them. 

The  framers  of  our  present  tariff  seem  to  have  acted  on 
that  principle.  Such  raw  materials  as  do  not  compete  with 
home  industry  are  admitted  free  of  duty ;  and  on  such  as  do 
so  compete,  and  are  of  national  importance,  duties  are  im- 
posed. Feeble  but  persevering  efforts  are  made  by  some 
writers  to  spread  the  idea,  that  our  manufacturers  are  op- 
pressed by  duties  on  their  raw  materials. 

I  have  just  shown  that  the  total  amount  of  duties  we  col- 
lected in  1875,  on  all  our  imports  of  raw  materials  to  be  used 
in  manufacture,  was,  in  round  numbers,  only  six  million  four 
hundred  and  seventy-eight  thousand  dollars.  Of  this  sum,  three 
million  seven  hundred  and  ninety  thousand  dollars  came  from 
duties  on  wool,  leaving  but  two  million  six  hundred  and  eighty- 
eight  thousand  dollars  bearing  on  other  manufactures.  As 
the  total  annual  value  of  our  manufactures  of  wool,  includ- 
ing worsteds  and  carpets,  exceeds  one  hundred  and  ninety-nine 
million  of  dollars,  it  will  be  seen  that  the  duties  on  the  wool 
used  amount  to  scarcely  two  per  cent  on  the  value  of  the 
manufactured  product.  The  duties  on  other  raw  materials 
than  wool  bear  a  still  less  average  percentage  to  the  aggregate 
value  of  the  various  manufactures  to  which  they  directly  or 
indirectly  relate. 

Our  present  tariff  on  wool  and  manufactures  of  wool 
places  the  wool  manufacturer,  so  far  as  his  relation  to  foreign 
competitors  is  concerned,  on  the  same  footing  as  though  he 
received  his  wool  free  of  duty.  On  manufactures  of.  wool  it 
imposes  a  specific  duty,  equivalent  to  the  amount  of  the  duty 
on  the  wool  entering  into  such  manufactures.  It  then  adds 


ENGLAND    AND   THE  UNITED    STATES.  27 

a  duty  for  revenue  and  protection  the  same  as  is  imposed  on 
manufactures  of  cotton  and  of  iron,  on  the  raw  material  of 
which  no  duty  is  needed  or  imposed.  It  cannot  be  justly 
said,  therefore,  that  the  duty  on  wool  oppresses  the  wool 
manufacturer.  This  system  of  adjusting  the  duties  on 
manufactures  of  wool  relatively  to  the  duties  on  wool  is  a 
marked  feature  of  the  present  tariff.  It  allows  of  equal  pro- 
tection being  given  to  the  wool  grower  and  the  wool  manu- 
facturer ;  and  under  its  operation  the  wool  industry  of  the 
country,  in  all  its  branches,  has  been  largely  developed. 

The  duties  on  wool  are  justified  by  considerations  of  public 
policy.  Sheep  husbandry  is  essential  to  industrial  as  well  as 
national  independence.  Every  civilized  and  semi-civilized 
nation  has  its  flocks.  The  whole  number  of  sheep  in  the  world 
is  estimated  &tfour  hundred  and  eighty-four  million.  Of  this 
number,  Great  Britain  has  thirty-four  million,  and  the  United 
States  about  the  same  number.  Sheep  husbandry  benefits  a 
nation  by  fertilizing  its  soil,  by  furnishing  a  necessary  fibre  for 
clothing  its  people,  and,  above  all,  by  contributing  to  its  supply 
of  animal  food.  In  populous  regions,  the  mutton  of  a  sheep  is 
much  more  valuable  than  its  wool.  The  value  of  the  prod- 
uce of  sheep  husbandry  in  Great  Britain  is  stated,  on  good 
authority,  to  amount  annually  to  one  hundred  and  fifty-nine 
millions  of  dollars ;  over  one  hundred  million  dollars  of  this 
sum  being  derived  from  the  mutton.  The  value  of  the  prod- 
uce of  sheep  husbandry  in  the  United  States,  I  have  not  seen 
stated.  It  is  known,  however,  that  our  domestic  fleeces  sup- 
ply ninety  per  cent  of  the  wool  used  in  our  extensive  woollen 
goods  manufacture ;  the  value  of  which,  in  1870,  exceeded 
one  hundred  and  fifty-five  million  dollars.  There  are  ways  in 
which  the  United  States  are  or  may  be  peculiarly  benefited 
by  sheep  husbandry.  But,  as  I  have  not  the  space  to  present 
them,  I  will  refer  my  readers  to  a  very  able  discussion  of  the 
subject  by  Mr.  John  L.  Hayes,  in  an  article  entitled  "  The 
Part  of  the  Wool  Industry  in  our  National  Economy."  l 


1  See  Bulletin  of  the  National  Association  of  Wool  Manufacturers,  vol.  vi. 
pp.  221-253. 


28  THE   TARIFF   POLICY   OF 

The  question  is  sometimes  asked,  why  sjieep  husbandry  in 
the  United  States,  with  low-priced  land,  requires  a  duty  on 
wool  to  sustain  it ;  when,  in  England,  with  relatively  high- 
priced  land,  it  prospers  without  a  duty.  To  this  ques- 
tion there  are  several  answers.  I  have  space  to  mention 
only  one  or  two  of  them.  The  sheep  which  are  now 
mostly  grown  in  England  are  the  "mutton  sheep;"  such  as 
the  Southdowns,  the  Cotswold,  and  the  Leicester.  These 
breeds  of  sheep  not  only  yield  a  large  amount  of  animal  food, 
but  produce  a  long-stapled  wool,  which  is  of  special  value  in 
the  manufacture  of  worsted  goods.  In  the  textile  industry 
of  England,  the  worsted  manufacture  is  second  only  to  that  of 
cotton.  It  has  grown  up  with  English  sheep  husbandry  in 
such  relations  of  reciprocal  dependence,  that  the  raising  of 
worsted  wools  and  the  manufacture  of  them  have  acted  and 
reacted  on  each  other,  and  developed  a  distinctive  national 
industry.  Such  worsted  wools  as  England  produces  are  in 
limited  supply  the  world  over.  British  farmers  and  writers 
declare  that  "  the  sheep  is  literally  the  basis  of  English 
husbandry  ;  that  they  have  become  an  indispensable  necessity, 
as  there  is  no  other  means  of  keeping  up  the  land."  1  Now, 
if  we  take  into  view  its  benefit  to  her  agriculture,  the  value 
of  its  mutton,  and  the  fact  that  only  a  comparatively  small 
amount  of  competing  wools  are  grown  elsewhere,  we 
readily  see  how  England's  sheep  husbandry  can  prosper 
without  the  encouragement  of  law.  In  the  United  States, 
the  conditions  relating  to  sheep  husbandry  are  quite  different 
from  those  in  England. 

Notwithstanding  that  the  raising  of  long-wool  sheep  has 
made  considerable  progress  here  under  our  present  tariff,  the 
sheep  mostly  grown  in  this  country  are  of  the  merino  type. 
The  wools  they  produce,  having  a  wide  range  of  uses,  have 
to  compete  with  the  wools  of  Australia,  the  Argentine  Re- 
public, and  other  wool-producing  countries.  As  our  merino 
sheep,  in  greater  part,  are  raised  in  large  flocks,  in  sparsely 


1  Bulletin  of    the    National   Association    of  Wool   Manufacturers,  vol.  vi. 
p.  163. 


ENGLAND    AND    THE    UNITED    STATES.  29 

populated  parts  of  the  country,  the  mutton  —  which,  in 
England,  is  the  most  valuable  part  of  sheep  husbandry  — 
cannot,  generally  speaking,  be  turned  to  very  much  account. 
Much  more  might  be  said  in  answer  to  the  above  interrogatory, 
but  the  facts  already  stated  are  enough  to  show  that  the 
question  of  duties  or  no  duties  on  wool  is  a  very  different  one 
in  the  United  States  from  what  it  is  in  England.  Again,  it 
may  be  asked,  why  our  farmers  have  not  raised  more  of  the 
long-wool  sheep.  Prominent  among  the  causes  which  have 
retarded  the  extension  of  this  important  branch  of  sheep  hus- 
bandry, is  bad  tariff  legislation.  The  tariff  of  1846,  which 
put  a  horizontal  duty  on  wool  and  manufactures  of  wool, 
was  hostile  both  to  wool  growing  and  wool  manufacturing  ; 
and  the  consequence  was  that  the  wool  manufacture  was 
prostrated,  and  sheep  husbandry  languished  for  the  want  of  a 
market  for  its  wool.  Under  such  a  tariff,  the  worsted  manu- 
facture could  get  no  foothold  here.  It  was  not  until  after 
the  adoption  of  the  system  of  wool  duties  before  explained, 
that  it  took  root.  Under  that  system,  the  worsted  manu- 
facture has  made  rapid  strides,  and  now  annually  exceeds  in 
value  twenty  millions  of  dollars.  Consequent  upon  the  de- 
mand for  worsted  wool  created  by  the  development  of  the 
worsted  manufacture,  the  raising  of  the  long-wool,  mutton 
sheep  has  been  nationalized,  and  is  being  extended. 

DUTIES  ON  ARTICLES  PARTIALLY  MANUFACTURED.  — 
England,  in  1875,  as  shown  by  Table  E,  p.  21,  imported 
articles  partially  manufactured  to  the  value  of  one  hundred 
and  forty-two  million  dollars,  and  the  United  States  to  the 
value  of  only  thirty-five  million  dollars.  On  our  imports  of 
this  class  of  articles  we  impose  an  average  duty  of  about  four- 
teen per  cent,  amounting  in  the  aggregate  to  four  million  eight 
hundred  and  nineteen  thousand  dollars.  In  England,  they 
are  admitted  duty  free.  The  reasons  for  our  imposing  duties 
on  articles  partially  manufactured  are  substantially  the  same 
as  those  which  justify  duties  on  raw  materials  ;  and,  as  those 
reasons  have  already  been  stated,  they  need  not  be  repeated 
here. 


V  OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


30  THE   TARIFF   POLICY   OF 

DUTIES  ON  ARTICLES  WHOLLY  MANUFACTURED.  —  In 
1875,  as  shown  by  the  table  just  referred  to,  England  im- 
ported articles  wholly  manufactured,  to  the  value  of  one 
hundred  and  ninety-seven  million  dollars ;  and  the  United 
States,  to  about  the  same  value.  From  their  imports  of  this 
class  of  articles,  the  United  States  derived  eighty-ttvo  million 
dollars  of  customs  revenue,  and  England  derived  none. 

I  have  already  shown  how  largely  England  depended  on 
the  protection  of  law  to  develop  her  resources  and  to  estab- 
lish her  manufactures.  I  have  also  pointed  out  the  exigencies 
which  compelled  her  to  reverse  her  tariff  policy.  That  her 
tariff  measures  in  the  main  have  been  well  suited  to  her  needs, 
I  do  not  deny.  But,  however  expedient  the  repeal  of  her 
duties  on  manufactures  may  have  seemed  at  the  time  it  was 
done,  it  is  now  a  question  whether  it  has  not  proved  detri- 
mental to  her.1  It  is  true  that,  for  some  time  after  the  repeal 
of  these  duties  her  imports  of  manufactures  (excepting  those 
of  siJk)  did  not  much  increase  ;  but,  in  later  years,  manu- 
facture has  made  such  rapid  progress  in  other  countries  that 
England  now  encounters  a  strong  foreign  competition. 

In  1875,  one  hundred  and  ninety -seven  million  dollars'  worth 
of  articles  wholly  manufactured,  and  one  hundred  and  forty- 
two  million  dollars'  worth  of  articles  partially  manufactured, 
were  thrown  upon  her  home  market.  The  admission  of 
raw  materials  free,  and  of  corn  (breadstuff's)  at  a  nominal 
duty,  was  the  only  feature  of  her  free-trade  measures  that 

1  A  cry  which  seemed  to  be  dead  has  therefore  suddenly  revived,  —  the  cry 
for  protection,  although  it  is  at  present  but  faintly  heard.  There  are  some- 
times little  "  news  paragraphs  "  in  the  daily  journals  which  are  better  worth 
attention  than  the  leading  articles ;  and  perhaps  some  of  our  readers  noticed 
a  few  days  ago  a  few  lines  setting  forth  that  a  deputation  of  English  silk  manu- 
facturers had  waited  upon  Lord  Derby  requesting  him  to  get  a  reduction  of 
French  duties  on  our  silk,  or  else  to  lay  heavy  duties  on  French  silks  brought 
over  here.  Protection  seemed  as  extinct  as  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  but  here 
it  is  again  ;  and,  what  is  more,  we  venture  to  predict  that  we  shall  see  a  good 
deal  more  of  it  during  the  next  few  years  than  many  people  suppose.  "  We 
must  think  only  of  the  consumers,"  the  working-men  are  told.  But  when  the 
producers  are  nearly  as  numerous  as  the  consumers,  and  find  themselves  on 
the  verge  of  starvation,  what  they  will  demand  remains  to  be  seen.  —  London 
World. 


ENGLAND    AND    THE    UNITED    STATES.  31 

strengthened  her  position  against  foreign  competition.  The 
repeal  of  the  duties  on  manufactures  could  have  no  such 
effect  ;  and,  had  these  duties  been  retained,  her  exports 
would  not  have  been  diminished,  and  her  home  market 
would  have  remained  unimpaired.  But,  rightly  to  under- 
stand the  grounds  of  England's  policy  in  this  regard,  we 
must  keep  in  view  the  fact,  that  to  induce  other  nations  to 
relax  their  commercial  regulations  was  and  is  her  constant 
aim,  —  an  aim  which  largely  sways  her  diplomatic  as  well 
as  her  legislative  action.  For  several  years  before  the  enact- 
ment of  her  free-trade  measures,  the  whole  influence  of  the 
government,  with  all  the  aid  diplomacy  could  render,  was 
exerted  to  induce  the  nations  with  which  England  deals 
to  favor,  by  commercial  treaties,  the  admission  of  her  pro- 
ductions. These  efforts  were  in  every  case  unsuccessful.1 
Neither  the  profound  arguments  of  Downing  Street,  nor  the 
persuasiveness  of  able  and  wily  embassadors,  could  bring 
those  nations  to  believe  that  it  would  be  better  for  them  to 
allow  Great  Britain  to  do  their  manufacturing.  When  this 
great  and  disinterested  instructor  of  the  nations  had  ex- 
hausted every  other  method  in  vain  endeavors  to  convince 
them  that  she  understood  their  interests  far  better  than 
they  themselves  understood  them,  she  resolved  to  make  one 
more  effort ;  namely,  that  of  teaching  by  example.  To  this 
end  she  adopted  ''free-trade  "  as  her  watchword,  and  enacted 
the  so-called  free-trade  measures,  the  character  and  effects 
of  which  I  have  already  explained.  The  duties  on  manufac- 
tures which  these  measures  repealed  had  become  an  insignifi- 
cant item  in  the  receipts  of  the  custom-house.  At  the  time 
of  their  repeal,  the  total  annual  amount  of  duties  collected 
on  iron,  and  on  manufactures  of  cotton,  wool,  and  flax,  was 
less  than  half  a  million  dollars.  Had  England  regarded  the 
repeal  of  these  duties  with  sole  reference  to  her  domestic 
interests,  it  is  not  likely  that  it  would  have  occurred ;  for 
it  must  have  been  obvious  that  its  effect  would  be  to  weaken 
rather  than  strengthen  her  home  market.  But  her  object 
was  to  enlarge  her  foreign  market.  By  setting  an  example 

1  See  Mr.  Gladstone's  letter  to  Mr.  Hadfield,  p.  47. 


32  THE   TARIFF   POLICY   OF 

in  the  direction  of  free-trade,  she  hoped  to  induce  other  nations 
to  relax  their  tariffs,  and  thereby  increase  the  foreign  demand 
for  her  productions  in  a  greater  ratio  than  the  home  demand 
diminished  under  open  competition.  Her  anticipations  in 
this  regard,  however,  have  not  been  realized.  The  figures 
which  I  have  already  given  show  that,  since  the  repeal  of 
these  duties,  she  has  lost  no  inconsiderable  part  of  her  home 
market ;  and  there  is  no  evidence  that  by  that  repeal  she  has 
gained  an  equivalent  foreign  market.  In  adopting  this  policy, 
England  no  doubt  reckoned  on  being  able  to  maintain  her 
pre-eminence  as  a  manufacturing  nation  ;  and  probably  would 
have  done  so,  had  other  nations  acted  on  her  free-trade  advice, 
and  allowed  the  importation  of  British  productions  to  dwarf 
their  own  manufacturing  industry.  But  those  nations  — 
choosing  to  imitate  England's  earlier  practice,  rather  than 
follow  her  later  advice  —  continued  to  defend  their  own 
industries ;  and  now,  instead  of  being  her  industrial  depend- 
ents, are  her  formidable  rivals. 

In  no  other  country  does  England  watch  the  course  of 
tariff  legislation,  or  strive  so  much  to  influence  it,  as  in  the 
United  States ;  and  for  obvious  reasons.  Of  all  the  foreign 
markets  for  her  productions,  ours  is  the  largest.  According 
to  the  report  of  the  "  Bureau  of  Statistics,"  our  imports  from 
Great  Britain,  during  the  ten  years  ending  1876,  amounted 
in  value  to  one  thousand  eight  hundred  and  thirteen  million 
dollars.  In  the  year  1872,  the  value  of  our  imports  from  that 
source  was  two  hundred  and  forty-nine  million  dollars,1  and 
their  mean  annual  value  for  the  ten  years  in  question  was 
one  hundred  and  eighty-one  million  dollars.  Nearly  three-fourths 
of  these  imports  were  productions  of  the  United  Kingdom, 
and  consisted  mainly  of  manufactures.  These  large  importa- 
tions, be  it  remembered,  took  place  under  our  present  tariff, 
which  is  not  unfrequently  stigmatized  as  a  prohibitory  tariff. 
A  tariff  which  allows  over  one  hundred  and  thirty-five  million 
dollars'  worth  of  manufactures  to  be  annually  thrown  upon 
our  market,  from  one  country  alone,  is  very  far  from  being  pro- 
hibitory. It  must  be  obvious  to  all  who  will  look  at  the  facts, 

1  Quarterly  Report  (No.  1)  of  the  Bureau  of  Statistics  for  1877,  p.  91. 


ENGLAND    AND    THE    UNITED    STATES.  33 

and  can  trace  causes  to  their  effects,  that  had  our  duties  been 
materially  lower  than  they  are,  excessive  importation  would 
have  prostrated  our  manufacturing  industry.  Nevertheless, 
there  are  many  among  us  who,  in  disregard  of  facts,  contend 
that  our  customs  duties  retard  the  development  of  our  manu- 
factures, and  that  under  free-trade  we  should  be  better  able 
to  withstand  foreign  competition  than  we  now  are.  This  is  a 
position  which  they  assume  without  giving  the  slightest  proof 
in  support  of  it.  Fortunately,  we  are  not  left  to  theory  alone 
for  a  decision  of  this  question.  We  have  a  practical  demon- 
stration of  it  based  upon  actual  experience.  The  history  of 
the  silk  manufacture  of  England  conclusively  shows  what  the 
condition  of  our  manufacturing  industry  generally  would  be 
if  our  customs  duties  were  repealed.  At  one  time,  the  silk 
manufacture  was  the  third  in  value  of  Great  Britain's  textile 
industries.  In  1860,  it  amounted  (in  round  numbers)  to 
ninety-four  million  dollars.  Of  this  amount,  seventy-nine  million 
dollars'  worth  entered  into  home  consumption,  and  fifteen 
million  dollars'  worth  were  exported.1  This  important  branch 
of  industry  owed  its  origin  and  development  in  Great  Britain 
to  prohibitory  or  high  protective  duties.  In  1824,  the  duties 
were  reduced  to  thirty  per  cent  ad  valorem.  They  were  after- 
wards further  reduced.  Mr.  Gladstone,  in  1853,  in  his  Budget 
speech  of  that  year,  spoke  in  regard  to  them  as  follows : 
"  We  have  not  thought  it  right  to  propose  a  reduction  in 
the  silk  duties,  which  are  fifteen  per  cent ;  the  question  of  the 
silk-duties  is  mainly  a  question  of  revenue,  and  in  regard  to 
it  we  do  not  think  it  is  an  article  that  has  the  strongest  claims 
upon  our  consideration  ;  for,  so  far  as  it  is  an  article  into  the 
manufacture  of  which  protection  enters,  the  protection  has 
mainly  reference  to  certain  classes  of  operatives,  with  respect 
to  whom  it  would  be  the  disposition  of  Parliament  to  proceed 
carefully  and  with  great  circumspection." 

Notwithstanding  that  Mr.  Gladstone,  speaking  as  Prime 
Minister  of  England,  virtually  admitted  that  "  certain  classes 
of  operatives"  (meaning  the  silk  operatives)  needed  pro- 
tection, the  industry  which  gave  them  their  means  of  sub- 

1  London  Journal  of  the  Society  of  Arts,  vol.  ix.  No.  433. 


34 


THE   TARIFF    POLICY   OF 


sistence  was  finally  sacrificed  in  behalf  of  England's  one 
great  aim,  namely,  to  command  the  foreign  markets  of  the 
world.  For  England,  while  professing  free-trade,  and  ad- 
vising other  nations  to  adopt  it,  to  maintain  protective  duties 
on  the  only  branch  of  her  industry  which,  at  that  time,  needed 
them,  was  an  inconsistency  which  impeached  her  sincerity, 
and  weakened  her  free-trade  influence  abroad.  Under  the 
pressure  of  these  circumstances,  her  silk  duties,  in  1860,  were 
repealed.  The  removal  of  these  duties  brought  disaster 
to  the  silk  industry  of  England.  Her  home  market  was 
flooded  with  foreign  silks,  numerous  manufacturers  of  silk 
failed,  thousands  of  silk  operatives  were  thrown  out  of  em- 
ployment, and  that  once  prosperous  industry  was  largely 
prostrated.  The  enormous  extent  to  which  foreign  silks  were 
thrown  upon  her  home  market,  after  the  repeal  of  the  duties, 
is  shown  in  Table  I.,  which  gives  the  value  of  the  imports  of 
silk  manufactures  into  Great  Britain,  in  each  year,  from  1854 

to  1875 :  — 

TABLE  I. 


Years. 

Value  of  Imports.1 

Years. 

Value  of  Imports. 

1854 

Dollars. 

11,550,855 

1865 

Dollars. 

41,677,235 

1855 

11,994,365 

1866 

46,563,090 

1856 

13,263,965 

1867 

44,922,375 

1857 

11,827,075 

1868 

53,977,260 

1858 

11,085,535 

1869 

58,973,800 

1859 

11,345,860 

1870 

75,491,635 

1860  2 

16,718,805 

1871 

40,978,625 

1861 

28,647,225 

1872 

45,709,315 

1862 

31,992,810 

1873 

48,902,445 

1863 

32,209,745 

1874 

58,710,330 

1864 

37,409,035 

1875 

60,091,660 

I  invite  a  careful  examination  of  this  instructive  table.  It 
shows  that,  from  1859  to  1861,  —  that  is,  the  year  before 
and  the  year  after  the  repeal  of  the  silk  duties,  —  the  im- 

1  The  figures  in  this  Table  for  1854  to  1860  were  derived  from  the  "  Annual 
Statement  of  the  Trade  and  Navigation  of  the  United  Kingdom  ;  "  and  for  1861 
and  the  following  years,  from  "  Statistical  Abstract  for  the  United  Kingdom," 
23d  Number,  pp.  36,  37. 

2  In  1860  the  duties  on  manufactures  of  silk  were  repealed. 


ENGLAND   AND   THE   UNITED   STATES.  35 

ports  of  silk  manufactures  into  Great  Britain  increased  one 
hundred  and  fifty  per  cent ;  and  that  from  1859  to  1875,  the 
increase  was  five  hundred  per  cent.  Thus  it  appears  that  the 
value  of  foreign  silk  manufactures  put  upon  the  home  mar- 
ket, in  displacement  of  English  silk  manufactures,  was  forty - 
eight  million  dollars  more  in  1875  than  in  1859. 

In  view  of  these  facts,  it  is  not  surprising  to  find  the  silk 
Manufacturers  of  England  asking  for  protection.1 

To  understand  fully  the  relation  which  the  tariff  experience 
of  England  in  regard  to  her  silk  industry  has  to  our  own 
tariff  policy,  we  must  take  into  view  the  fact,  that  the  silk  in- 
dustry of  P^ngland  sustains  a  relation  to  foreign  competition 
similar  to  that  which  our  manufacturing  industries  generally 
sustain.  There  are  conditions  of  production  which  enable 
the  silk  manufacturers  of  the  Continent  of  Europe  to  under- 
sell the  silk  manufacturers  of  England  ;  and  there  are  con- 
ditions of  production  (as  I  shall  show  hereafter)  which  en- 
able the  manufacturers  of  England  and  of  the  Continent  to 
undersell  our  manufacturers.  For  these  reasons,  neither  the 
silk  industry  of  England  nor  the  manufacturing  industries  of 
the  United  States  can  prosper  without  protective  duties. 

The  disparities  in  the  conditions  of  production  which  ex- 
ist between  England  and  the  Continent  are  very  much  less 
than  those  which  exist  between  the  United  States  and 
England  and  the  Continent.  England's  duty  of  fifteen  per 
cent  as  effectually  protected  her  silk  industry  as  our  present 
tariff  protects  our  manufacturing  industries.  England  has 
tried  the  experiment  of  repealing  her  silk  duties,  the  disas- 
trous results  of  which  I  have  already  set  forth.  Shall  we 
repeat  the  blunder,  by  repealing  our  duties  on  manufactures 
-generally?  If  England's  repeal  of  her  silk  duties  pros- 
trated her  silk  industry,  can  any  one  doubt  that  the  repeal  of 
our  duties  on  manufactures  would  prostrate  our  manufactur- 
ing industries  ? 

I  have  dwelt  long  on  the  experience  of  England  in  regard 
to  her  silk  duties,  as  it  furnishes  the  most  decisive  proof  of 
the  unsound  ness  of  the  views  of  those  who  assert  that  our 

1  See  citation  from  the  "  London  World,"  at  the  foot  of  page  30. 


36 


THE   TARIFF   POLICY   OF 


manufacturing  industries    would  prosper   better   under    the 
policy  of  free-trade  than  under  the  policy  of  protection. 

The  question  is  often  asked,  Why  are  protective  duties 
required  to  develop  and  sustain  manufactures  in  the  United 
States  ?  Not,  certainly,  because  our  countrymen  are  less 
capable  than  their  European  rivals ;  for,  in  intelligence,  in- 
genuity, and  aptness  to  learn,  they  have  no  superiors.  It  is 
not  because  our  natural  advantages  are  less,  nor  from  inabil- 
ity to  acquire  the  requisite  skill ;  for  we  have  carried  some 
manufactures  to  a  perfection  nowhere  else  attained.  There  are, 
however,  certain  conditions  which  affect,  directly  or  indirectly, 
the  cost  of  production,  in  respect  of  Avhich  other  manufac- 
turing nations  have  a  decided  advantage  over  us.  Promi- 
nent among  these  disadvantageous  conditions,  though  riot  all 
of  them,  are  the  rates  of  interest  on  capital,  the  rates  of  wages 
paid  for  labor,  and  the  rates  of  local  taxation.  That  these 
are  things  beyond  the  control  of  our  manufactures,  no  one 
will  deny.  That  the  necessity  of  paying,  in  all  these  re- 
spects, much  higher  rates  than  their  rivals  have  to  pay,  puts 
them  at  a  serious  disadvantage,  seems  equally  certain.  Let 
us  see  how  this  case  stands.  For  the  fifteen  years  ending 
1860,  the  rate  of  interest  in  England  averaged  4.02  per  cent ; 
in  France,  4.16  per  cent ;  and  in  the  United  States,  9.12 
per  cent,  —  showing  a  disparity  against  us  of  five  per  cent.1 

1  Statement  of  the  Comparative  Rates  of  Interest  in  England,  France,  and  the 
United  States,  in  each  Year,  from  1846  to  1860. 


YEARS. 

ENGLAND. 

BANK  OF 
FRANCE. 

UNITED 

STATES. 

MARKET. 

BANK. 

1846  
1847  
1848  

Per  cent. 
3.79 
5.85 
3.21 
2.31 
2.25 
3.06 
1.91 
3.67 
4.94 
4.67 
5.90 
669 
3.15 
2.74 
4.42 

Per  cent. 
3.21 
5.21 
3.71 
2.94 
2.52 
3.00 
2.15 
3.69 
5.31 
5.64 
5.90 
6.59 
3.23 
2.74 
4.42 

Per  cent. 
4.00 
4.92 
4.00 
4.00 
4.00 
4.00 
3.21 
3.21 
4.33 
4.42 
5.54 
6.00 
3.67 
3.46 
367 

Per  cent. 
8.35 
9.54 
15.12 
10.08 
8.02 
968 
6.42 
10.21 
10.37 
8.96 
8.92 
12.77 
4.99 
6.59 
6.80 

1849 

1850 

1851       

1852 

1853  

1854  .         .         .     . 

1855  
1856  ...... 

1857  . 

1858 

1859  
I860       

Mean  rate  for  the  15  year* 

3.90 

4.02 

4.16 

9.12 

7 


ENGLAND  AND    THE   UNITED   STATES.  37 

At  the  present  time,  the  rate  of  interest  is  exceptionally  low 
in  all  commercial  countries.  There  is  no  reason  to  suppose, 
however,  that,  with  a  revival  of  business,  the  normal  rates 
will  not  return.  Therefore,  taking  all  these  facts  into  ac- 
count, I  think  it  is  safe  to  say  that  in  the  long  run  the  average 
rate  of  interest  is  twice  as  high  here  as  it  is  with  our  princi- 
pal foreign  competitors ;  and  that  this  disparity  against  us  is 
at  least  three  per  cent.  In  England,  a  manufacturer  is  taxed 
only  on  the  rental  value  of  his  buildings  ;  whereas  here  the 
whole  amount  of  his  capital  employed  is  taxed,  and  to  an 
extent  which  makes  the  disparity  against  him  fully  one  per 
cent.  Skilled  labor  is  well  paid  in  all  manufacturing  coun- 
tries, and  commands  about  the  same  wages  elsewhere  as  here  ; 
but  our  wages  for  common  labor,  which  makes  up  the  prinpK 
pal  part  of  the  pay-roll,  are  twenty-five  per  cent  higher. ]XBut 
for  these  and  other  inequalities  of  condition,  our  manufac- 
turers could  enter  the  race  of  competition  with  little  fear  of 
being  distanced  by  any  foreign  rival.  It  is  mainly  upon  this 
ground  that  they  need  protective  duties.  They  seek  no  monop- 
oly, no  exclusive  privilege.  Give  them  an  even  chance  in  the 
game,  and  they  will  take  care  of  themselves.  But  not  until 
the  cost  of  labor,  taxation,  and  capital,  through  a  gradual  ap- 
proximation, or  by  some  great  alteration  here  or  there,  shall 
have  become  nearly  the  same  in  Europe  and  America,  will  it 
be  safe  to  abandon  our  present  tariff  policy.  So  long  as  local 


1  Mr.  David  A.  Wells,  when  Special  Commissioner  of  Revenue,  investigated 
this  subject  at  home  and  abroad,  and  thus  states  the  difference  between  the 
rates  of  wages  paid  in  the  United  States  and  the  rates  which  obtain  in  several 
other  countries,  gold  being  taken  as  the  standard  in  all  cases  :  — 

In  the  cotton  manufacture,  the  excess  of  wages  paid  in  the  United  States 
over  the  wages  paid  in  Great  Britain  is  27  7-10  per  cent ;  over  Belgium,  the 
excess  is  48  per  cent. 

In  the  wool  manufacture,  the  excess  over  Great  Britain  is,  in  woollen  mills,  25 
per  cent ;  in  carpet  and  worsted  mills,  58  per  cent.  Over  France,  Belgium,  Prus- 
sia, and  Austria,  the  average  excess  is  100  per  cent. 

In  iron  foundries  and  machinery  building,  the  excess  over  British  wages  is 
58  per  cent. 

In  the  manufacture  of  iron,  the  average  weekly  wages  paid  to  puddlcrs  (in 
gold)  are  $16.24  in  the  United  States ;  $8.75  in  England ;  $8  in  France;  $6  in 
Belgium;  §1.39  in  Russia.  —  Report  for  the  Year  1868. 


38  THE   TARIFF   POLICY   OF 

taxation  shall  depend  on  the  will  and  action  of  the  several 
States,  so  long  as  the  rates  of  wages  and  of  interest  in  our 
country  are  kept  up  by  the  abundance  of  land  and  the  demand 
for  labor,  neither  skill  nor  assiduity  on  the  part  of  our  pro- 
ducers can  remove  the  causes  of  that  disparity  which  places 
them  at  so  great  disadvantage.  The  remedy,  the  only  remedy, 
is  in  the  hands  of  our  national  government.  With  that  power 
it  rests  to  say  whether,  in  this  great  question  of  public  and 
economic  policy,  their  own  people  or  foreigners  shall  be  first 
considered. 


OUR  EXPORTS  OF  MANUFACTURES. 

For  nearly  half  a  century,  we  have  annually  exported 
more  or  less  of  domestic  manufactures.  At  first,  these 
exports  were  small  in  amount ;  and,  although  they  have 
increased  with  the  growth  of  the  country,  the  relative  prog- 
ress which  we  have  made  does  not  enable  us  to  look  with 
much  confidence  to  that  line  of  trade  as  a  rapidly  increasing 
source  of  national  prosperity.  From  a  quarter  supposed  to 
be  well  informed  upon  the  subject,  delusive  statements  have 
been  put  forth  in  regard  to  our  ability  to  compete  with  other 
manufacturing  nations  in  neutral  markets.  A  wide  publicity 
has  been  given  to  these  statements,  and  short  paragraphs  of 
the  same  tenor  often  appear  in  the  daily  papers.  The  main 
drift  of  these  publications  is  to  the  effect  that  the  United 
States  can  now,  as  a  general  fact,  manufacture,  at  less  cost 
than  other  manufacturing  nations ;  and  that  a  growing  for- 
eign demand  for  her  manufactures  will  open  to  her  in  the 
immediate  future  a  career  of  prosperity  hitherto  unknown. 
The  time  may  come  when  these  pleasing  anticipations  may 
be  realized ;  but  in  the  nature  of  things  it  must  be  at  some 
far  distant  day.  From  the  circumstance  of  our  being  able 
to  export  certain  articles  of  domestic  manufacture,  the  infer- 
ence has  been  inconsiderately  drawn  that,  as  a  general  fact, 
we  surpass  in  cheapness  of  production  all  other  countries. 
A  broader  view  of  the  question  does  not  justify  such  an 
inference.  I  have  already  shown  that  the  disparities  against 


ENGLAND   AND  THE   UNITED    STATES.  39 

us  in  the  rates  of  interest,  wages,  and  local  taxation,  inevi- 
tably, as  a  general  fact,  make  the  cost  of  manufacturing  here 
r  greater  than  it  is  abroad.  The  general  expenses  of  carrying 
on  business  are  also  much  greater  here  than  with  our  foreign 
rivals  ;  and,  though  the  difference  cannot  be  expressed  in 
figures,  it  is  known  to  be  such  as  materially  to  enhance  the 
cost  of  production. 

A  nation  that  manufactures  at  relative  disadvantage  will 
always  be  able  to  export  more  or  less  of  its  productions. 
Improvements  in  machinery,  a  new  article  of  manufacture, 
indigenous  raw  materials,  or  a  peculiar  condition  of  markets 
and  of  exchanges,  may  at  times,  and  in  special  cases,  coun- 
terbalance the  general  disadvantage,  and  induce  an  excep- 
tional export  trade.  By  looking  over  the  official  list  of  our 
exports  of  manufactures,  any  person  acquainted  with  the 
conditions  of  production  will  see  that  they  are,  for  the  most 
part,  exceptional,  and  that  there  are  special  reasons  why  we 
'are  able  to -export  them.  We  export  bark-tanned  leather, 
because  the  bark  used  costs  here  less  than  one-half  of  what  it 
costs  abroad,  although  the  labor  of  tanning  costs  more.  We 
export  fire-arms,  by  reason  of  improved  machinery  and  the 
practice  of  the  interchangeable  system  of  parts,  whereby  a 
given  part  of  one  arm  will  fit  any  similar  arm,  —  an  advan- 
tage which  gives  the  American  arms  the  preference,  at  higher 
cost,  over  the  arms  made  abroad,  where  that  system  has  not 
been  adopted.  We  export  sewing-machines,  because  they 
are  of  American  origin  ;  but,  since  their  manufacture  has 
been  established  in  other  countries,  the  number  of  machines 
exported  has  greatly  fallen  off.  American  sewing-silk  has 
been  exported,  not,  however,  because  we  can  manufacture 
sewing-silk  at  less  cost  than  other  countries,  —  for  the  re- 
verse of  that  is  true,  —  but  because  it  was  adapted  to 
machine  use,  and  consequently  followed  the  American  sew- 
ing-machine abroad.  Our  earliest  exports  of  cotton  goods 
were  mainly  to  China  ;  and  consisted,  for  the  most  part,  of 
an  article  known  as  "  brown  drilling," — a  fabric  of  Amer- 
ican origin.  At  first,  it  met  with  no  foreign  competition  ; 
and,  being  well  suited  to  the  needs  of  the  Chinaman,  it  got 
a  foothold  in  that  market,  which  it  has  maintained  to  this 


40  THE   TARIFF   POLICY   OF 

day.  In  later  years  the  cotton  fabrics  which  we  export  have 
been  considerably  diversified,  and  the  markets  to  which  they 
are  sent  have  been  multiplied ;  nevertheless,  the  value  of 
the  trade  has  not  much  increased.  In  1860,  the  total  value 
(in  round  numbers)  of  our  exports  of  cotton  manufactures 
was  ten  million  and  nine  hundred  thousand  dollars  ;  and,  for 
the  fiscal  year  just  closed,  it  was  twelve  million  and  eighty- 
eight  thousand  dollars,  —  a  gain  of  only  eleven  hundred  and 
eighty-eight  thousand  dollars  in  seventeen  years.1  In  this  brief 
history  of  our  exports  of  domestic  manufactures,  I  see  no 
evidence  that,  as  a  general  fact,  we  manufacture  at  less  cost 
than  other  nations.  If  we  could  do  so  in  respect  of  any  of 
the  great  industries,  it  would  be  that  of  the  cotton  manu- 
facture ;  for  the  raw  material  is  indigenous,  and  we  have  the 
best  of  machinery,  large  associated  capitals,  ample  skill,  and 
persevering  enterprise  employed  in  it.  Yet,  in  1875,  while 
we  exported  cotton  manufactures  to  the  value  of  only  nine 
hundred  and  eighteen  thousand  dollars,  we  imported  them  to 
the  value  of  twenty-seven  million  dollars,  and  paid  thereon 
the  present  duties.  Now,  if  we  can  manufacture  at  less  cost 
than  other  nations,  why  did  our  cotton  manufacturers  cur- 
tail their  production,  and  in  1875  allow  foreign  cotton  manu- 
factures to  the  value  of  twenty-seven  million  dollars,  paying 
an  average  duty  of  thirty-three  per  cent,  to  be  thrown  upon 
their  home  market  ? 

The  growth  of  our  exports  of  cotton  manufactures,  as 
compared  with  that  of  Great  Britain,  during  the  past  thirty 
years,  forbids  the  belief  that  we  are  to  have  a  rapid  increase 
of  trade  in  that  line. 

Table  J  shows  the  value  of  the  cotton  manufactures  ex- 
ported by  the  United  States  and  by  Great  Britain,  in  each 
year  from  1846  to  1875,  and  by  the  United  States  to  1877. 


1  Exceptional  circumstances  attended  the  exports  of  the  year  just  closed. 
The  prices  of  cotton  goods  were  unusually  low  in  currency ;  and  by  sending 
them  out  of  the  country  the  exporter  got  the  advantage  of  the  premium  on 
gold,  and,  to  the  extent  of  the  exports,  relieved  the  glut  in  the  home  market. 
Moreover,  special  efforts  were  made  to  increase  that  trade,  and  tentative  ven- 
tures were  made,  the  results  of  which  have  not  transpired.  Of  these  exports, 
$1,852,622  worth  were  sent  to  Canada. 


ENGLAND   AND    THE   UNITED   STATES. 


41 


TABLE  J. 


YEARS. 

United  States  Exported. 

Great  Britain  Exported. 

Dollars. 

Dollars. 

1846 

3,545,481 

127,999,130 

1847 

4,082,523 

116,666,125 

1848 

5,718,205 

113,406,000 

1849 

4,933,129 

133,875,675 

1850 

4,734,424 

141,282,005 

1851 

7,241,205 

150,444,180 

1852 

7,672,151 

149,390,435 

1853 

8,768,894 

163,564,510 

1854 

5,750,335 

158,729,285 

1855 

5,857,181 

173,895,705 

1856 

6,967,309 

191,163,705 

1857 

6,115,177 

195,367,100 

1858 

5,651,504 

215,006,610 

1859 

8,316,222 

241,011,125 

1860 

10,934,796 

260,061,900 

1861 

7,957,038 

234,362,445 

1862 

2,946,464 

183,754,855 

1863 

2,906,411 

237,935,940 

186i 

1,930,573 

274,411,645 

1865 

876,702 

286,330,605 

1866 

361,874 

373,065,230 

1867 

389,653 

354,184,915 

1868 

906,195 

338,433,860 

1869 

531,745 

335,584,870 

1870 

921,110 

357,081,725 

1871 

1,680,951 

364,107,055 

1872 

1,365,885 

400,820,775 

1873 

1,436,068 

386,815,060 

1874 

1,218,092 

371,238,135 

1875 

918,813 

358,858,565 

1876 

1,593,285 

1877 

12,088,465 

42  THE   TARIFF   POLICY   OF 

From  this  table  it  appears  that,  in  1875,  —  the  latest  year 
for  which  I  have  the  English  returns,  —  the  United  States 
exported  cotton  manufactures  to  the  value  of  nine  hundred 
and  eighteen  thousand  dollars,  and  Great  Britain  to  the  value 
of  three  hundred  and  fifty-eight  million  eight  hundred  thousand 
dollars  ;  that  is,  she  exported  three  hundred  and  ninety  times 
as  much  as  we  did. 

I  would  invite  all  who  are  accustomed  to  assert  that  we 
beat  Great  Britain  in  the  manufacture  of  cotton,  and  can 
drive  her  out  of  neutral  markets,  to  ponder  well  the  compar- 
ative figures  in  this  table,  and  answer  this  question :  At  the 
relative  rate  of  progress  of  the  two  countries,  indicated  by 
the  table,  how  long  will  it  take  the  United  States  to  get  so 
far  ahead  of  Great  Britain  as  to  justify  their  assertions? 

Of  kindred  origin,  and  alike  delusive,  is  the  idea,  that 
under  free-trade  our  exports  of  domestic  manufactures 
would  increase.  The  adoption  of  that  policy  at  our  present 
stage  of  progress  would  diminish,  rather  than  increase,  such 
exports.  Under  free-trade,  the  law  of  demand  and  supply 
would  bring  the  prices  of  commodities  here  to  a  general 
level  with  prices  abroad  ;  whereas,  there  are  conditions  that 
affect  the  cost  of  production  which  do  not  obey  that  law. 
We  have  always  had  free-trade  in  capital  and  in  labor,  and 
yet  the  rate  of  interest  and  the  rate  of  wages  (as  I  have 
already  shown)  rule  much  higher  here  than  in  older  coun- 
tries. Were  we  to  adopt  free-trade,  the  disparities  against 
us  in  the  cost  of  general  expenses,  in  the  rate  of  interest, 
and  in  the  rate  of  local  taxation,  would  remain  unchanged  ; 
and,  though  the  rate  of  wages  might  be  somewhat  reduced, 
our  abundance  of  land  would  prevent  its  falling  to  the  Eng- 
lish and  Continental  rates.  Free-trade,  therefore,  would 
reduce  the  prices  of  manufactured  articles  here  in  a  greater 
ratio  than  it  reduced  the  cost  of  their  production,  and  thus 
open  our  market  to  a  foreign  competition  which  would  take 
the  life  and  energy  out  of  our  manufacturing  industry,  retard 
its  progress,  and  thereby  weaken  our  ability  to  export  manu- 
factured products.  Our  export  trade  is,  indeed,  desirable, 
in  so  far  as  it  results  from  the  development  of  our  internal 


ENGLAND   AND   THE    UNITED    STATES.  43 

resources  ;  but  all  attempts  to  increase  it  at  the  expense  of 
the  home  demand  are  unwise.  Our  main  dependence  for  the 
distribution  of  our  vast  and  varied  productions  is,  and  must 
be,  the  home  market.  Though  the  ratio  of  the  home  demand 
to  the  foreign  demand  varies  in  different  articles,  we,  as  a 
general  fact,  export  only  eight  per  cent  of  the  aggregate 
value  of  our  manufacturing,  mechanical,  and  agricultural 
productions.  Probably  there  is  no  class  of  the  community 
which  is  more  benefited  by  protection  than  the  agriculturist. 
Without  such  protection,  thousands  and  thousands  of  people, 
who  are  now  among  the  consumers  of  agricultural  products, 
would  have  been  driven  into  the  ranks  of  producers ;  fur- 
nishing their  own  supplies,  and  reducing,  by  increased  com- 
petition, the  profits  of  both  the  home  and  the  foreign  trade. 
Hitherto,  for  reasons  that  will  readily  occur,  the  people  of 
the  Western  and  Southern  States  have  been  mainly  devoted 
to  agriculture  and  cotton  raising  ;  but  they  have  made  a 
good  beginning  in  manufacturing.  As  their  natural  advan- 
tages are  equal,  arid  in  some  respects  superior,  to  those  of 
the  North-Eastern  States,  the  time  cannot  be  far  distant 
when  they  will  see  it  to  be  for  their  interest  to  manufacture 
largely  for  themselves. 

Production  and  distribution  are  the  agencies  by  which 
human  wants  are  supplied ;  and  a  nation  increases  in  wealth 
in  the  ratio  that  the  sum  of  its  production  exceeds  that  of 
its  consumption.  The  paramount  object  to  be  kept  in  view\  ( 
in  shaping  our  commercial  policy  should  be  to  develop  in/ 
the  nation  its  maximum  power  of  production.  It  cannot  be 
denied,  however,  that  in  our  great  centres  of  trade  the  para- 
mount idea  is  distribution.  Although  production  and  distri- 
bution are  reciprocally  dependent,  the  former  is  of  primary 
importance  ;  for,  without  it,  the  latter  could  not  take  place. 
In  the  great  marts,  the  struggle  is  for  results,  without  much 
concern  as  to  the  means  by  which  they  are  produced.  Were 
those  who  mould  and  give  direction  to  public  opinion  in 
commercial  communities  to  consider  more  thoroughly  the 
conditions  of  production  on  which  the  prosperity  of  the  coun- 
try depends,  we  should  have  less  of  that  unpractical  reason- 
ing which  now  so  largely  misleads  the  popular  judgment. 


44  THE   TARIFF  POLICY   OF 

There  is  nothing  more  certain  in  human  affairs  than  that 
the  adoption  of  free-trade  by  the  United  States  at  their  pres- 
ent stage  of  progress  would  largely  diminish  their  productive 
power,  reduce  the  volume  of  their  trade,  both  foreign  and 
domestic,  and  consequently  lessen  their  general  prosperity. 
We  may  suppose  that  there  are  not  many  among  us  bold 
enough  openly  to  advocate  the  prostration  of  American 
industry  ;  yet  every  orator  and  writer  who  advocates  our 
adoption  of  free-trade  virtually  does  that. 


EFFORTS  OF  ENGLAND  TO  INFLUENCE  THE  TARIFF  POLICY 
OF  OTHER  COUNTRIES. 

I  have  already  intimated  that,  in  inaugurating  the  tariff 
reform  in  England,  her  statesmen  were  influenced  more  by 
the  exigencies  of  her  situation  than  by  a  belief  in  the  virtue 
of  free-trade  principles.  If  they  had  believed  that  free-trade 
is  absolutely  right,  and  protection  absolutely  wrong,  without 
qualification,  why  did  they  not  at  once  purge  England's  tariff 
of  all  protective  duties  ?  Why  did  they  impose  protective 
duties  on  many  articles  of  manufacture  as  late  as  1859  ?  Why 
did  they  retain  protective  duties  on  manufactures  of  silk  till 
1860,  —  fourteen  years  after  they  had  publicly  professed  the 
free-trade  faith  ?  Free-trade  in  corn  (breadstuffs)  being  the 
chief  corner-stone  of  the  free-trade  movement,  why  did  they 
continue  to  collect  a  duty  on  that  article  which  amounted  to 
more  than  four  millions  of  dollars l  in  1869,  —  the  year  of  its  final 
repeal  ?  To  these  interrogatories,  one  of  two  answers  must 
be  true  :  these  duties  were  retained  either  for  revenue,  or  with 
a  wise  discrimination  as  to  the  fitness  of  time  and  circum- 
stances for  their  repeal.  Both  of  these  answers  are  incon- 
sistent with  the  canons  of  free-trade.  The  free-trader  says, 
that,  while  it  is  right  to  raise  revenue  by  customs  duties,  it  is 
wrong  to  impose  such  duties  on  articles  produced  in  the 
country  imposing  the  duty :  and  yet  all  the  articles  to  which 

1  When  the  "corn  law"  was  repealed  in  1846,  a  duty  of  one  shilling  per 
quarter  was  imposed  on  corn,  which  was  continued  till  1869. 


ENGLAND   AND   THE    UNITED   STATES.  45 

these  interrogatories  relate  are  of  that  class  ;  that  is,  they  are 
produced  in  England.  Discrimination  as  to  fitness  of  time 
and  circumstances  in  removing  or  imposing  customs  duties  is 
the  fundamental  idea  of  protection. 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  motives  which  actuated  the 
free- trade  leaders,  it  is  certain  that  their  free-trade  professions 
have  been  a  powerful  means  of  aiding  their  cause.  Thousands 
of  orators  and  writers  who  never  would — perhaps  never  could 
—  have  discussed  the  tariff  question  on  practical  grounds, 
being  fascinated  by  the  "  glittering  generalities  "  which  sur- 
round the  free-trade  theory,  have  become  its  most  zealous 
advocates.  If  these  astute  leaders  intended,  by  their  free- 
trade  professions,  to  enlist  in  advocacy  of  British  interests 
this  class  of  orators  and  writers,  it  must  be  admitted  that  in 
the  United  States  they  have  met  with  some  success. 

That  one  great  end  of  the  free-trade  movement,  and  espe- 
cially of  the  way  in  which  it  has  been  paraded  before  the  world, 
was  and  is  to  influence  the  commercial  regulations  of  other 
nations,  is  shown,  not  only  by  the  internal  evidence  and  cir- 
cumstances of  the  case,  but  by  the  declarations  of  those  who 
were  prime  movers  in  the  affair.  Some  of  these  declarations 
appear  in  the  following  citations.  I  have  Italicized  certain 
phrases  worthy  of  note. 

In  his  speech,  opening  the  great  debate  of  1846,  on  the 
commercial  policy  of  England,  Sir  Robert  Peel,  after  referring 
to  the  protective  duties  of  other  countries,  said :  — 

"  You  have  defied  the  regulations  of  those  countries.  .  .  .  But 
your  efforts,  whatever  be  the  tariffs  of  other  countries,  or  however 
apparent  the  ingratitude  with  which  they  have  treated  you,  —  your 
export  trade  has  been  constantly  increasing.  By  the  remission  of 
your  duties  upon  raw  materials,  by  increasing  your  skill  and  in- 
dustry, by  competition  with  foreign  goods,  you  have  defied  your 
competitors  in  foreign  markets,  and  you  have  even  been  able  to 
exclude  them.  ...  I  say,  therefore,  to  you,  that  those  hostile 
tariffs,  so  far  from  being  an  objection  to  continuing  your  policy, 
are  an  argument  in  its  favor.  But,  depend  upon  it,  your  example 
will  ultimately  prevail?  l 

1  Hansard,  vol.  Ixxxiii.,  3d  series,  p.  277. 


46  THE  TARIFF  POLICY   OF 

And  again,  on  the  fifth  night  of  the  adjourned  debate,  Sir 
Robert  closed  his  remarkable  speech  in  these  words :  — 

"  Choose  your  motto  :  '  advance,'  or  '  recede.'  Determine  for 
*  advance,'  and  it  will  be  the  watchivord  that  will  animate  and  en- 
courage in  every  State  the  friends  of  liberal  commercial  policy. 
Sardinia  has  taken  the  lead  ;  Naples  is  relaxing  ;  Prussia  is  shaken. 
The  French  government  will  be  strengthened,  and  will,  perhaps,  pre- 
vail at  last  over  the  self-interest  of  the  commercial  and  manufact- 
uring aristocracy  that  now  predominates  in  her  chambers.  Can 
you  doubt  that  the  United  States  will  soon  relax  her  hostile  tariff, 
and  that  the  friends  of  a  freer  commercial  intercourse  —  the 
friends  of  peace  between  the  two  countries  —  will  hail  with  satis- 
faction the  example  of  England"  l 

Mr.  Gladstone,  in  his  "  Remarks  on  Recent  Commercial 
Legislation,"  writes  :  — 

"  I  have  dwelt  long  on  this  subject  of  the  commercial  policy  of 
foreign  States ;  but  it  is  one  of  immense  moment.  The  power  of 
capital,  skill,  industry,  long-established  character  and  connections, 
sustaining  English  commerce,  bears  up  against  all  that  has  been 
done.  .  .  .  But,  if  so,  it  may  be  naturally  asked,  Why  all  this 
anxiety  ?  My  answer  is,  that,  while  I  do  not  believe  that  we  have 
been  losers,  relatively  to  other  countries  of  which  I  now  speak, 
but  hold,  on  the  contrary,  that  their  blows  have  told  most  severely 
on  themselves,  yet  I  cannot  doubt  that  the  States  in  question  have 
taken  much  from  us  as  well  as  from  their  own  inhabitants  ;  have 
neutralized  or  contracted  a  thousand  benefits  which  it  was  practi- 
cable to  have  attained ;  and  that  their  policy  demands  from  us  a 
vigorous  and  steady  counteraction.  But  what  is  to  be  the  form  of 
that  counteraction  ?  Are  we  to  weary  them  by  remonstrances 
into  undoing  their  acts  ?  But  first,  as  matters  now  stand,  it  is  too 
probable  that  we  should  be  interpreted  by  contraries,  as  Irish  pigs 
are  said  to  understand  their  drivers  /  that  the  earnestness  of  our 
request  might  be  deemed  the  most  demonstrative  reason  against 
its  being  granted.  .  .  .  There  remains,  I  think,  only  one  course  : 
it  is  to  use  every  effort  to  disburden  of  all  charges,  so  far  as  our 
law  is  concerned,  the  materials  of  industry,  and  thus  to  enable  the 

1  Hansard,  vol.  Ixxxiii.,  3d  series,  p.  1036. 


ENGLAND   AND   THE   UNITED   STATES.  47 

workman  to  approach  his  work  at  home  on  better  terms,  as  the 
terms  on  which  he  enters  foreign  markets  are  altered  for  the  worse 
against  him.  .  .  .  It  is  this  regard  to  the  course  of  commerce  and 
of  commercial  legislation  in  the  world  at  large  which  convinces 
me  of  the  wisdom  of  pushing  further  than  might  otherwise  be 
necessary,  or  even  desirable,  our  efforts  to  relieve  the  materials 
of  industry  from  fiscal  burdens." 

We  have  a  later  and  a  very  striking  exposition  of  British 
policy,  as  designed  to  act  on  the  commercial  regulations  of 
other  countries,  in  a  letter  from  Mr.  Gladstone  to  Mr.  Had- 
field.  In  1856,  a  conference  of  the  Great  Powers  was  about 
to  sit  in  Paris  for  the  negotiation  and  establishment  of  peace  ; 
.and  the  Manchester  Chamber  of  Commerce  requested  the 
Earl  of  Clarendon  (who  was  to  represent  Great  Britain)  to 
use  his  influence  in  that  body  for  the  promotion  of  commercial 
freedom  in  Europe  by  diplomatic  means.  A  similar  move- 
ment was  on  foot  at  Sheffield ;  and  it  was  in  reference  to  its 
expediency  that  Mr.  Gladstone  was  consulted,  and  replied,  in 
part,  as  follows  :  — 

"  I  strongly  sympathize  with  the  feeling  which  has  prompted  the 
Chamber  of  Commerce  at  Manchester  to  present  a  memorial  to 
Lord  Clarendon,  with  a  view  to  his  using  his  influence,  at  the 
approaching  congress,  in  furtherance  of  commercial  freedom  in 
Europe.  I  am  also  confident  that  they  will  find  Lord  Clarendon 
most  anxious  to  give  effect  to  their  views.  Nor  can  I  desire  in 
any  manner  to  discourage  your  constituents  at  Sheffield  from  fol- 
lowing the  example  which  has  been  set  at  Manchester.  At  the 
same  time,  I  feel  bound  to  point  out  a  danger,  the  existence  of 
which  I  too  well  know  from  experience. 

"  Between  1841  and  1845,  I  held  office  in  the  Board  of  Trade ; 
and  this  was  the  period  during  which  England  was  most  actively 
engaged  in  the  endeavor  to  negotiate,  with  the  principal  States  of 
the  civilized  world,  treaties  for  the  reciprocal  reduction  of  duties 
upon  imports.  The  task  was  plied  on  our  side  with  sufficient  zeal ; 
but,  in  every  case,  we  failed.  Tarn  sorry  to  add  my  opinion,  that 
we  did  more  than  fail.  The  whole  operation  seemed  to  place  us 
in  a  false  position.  Its  tendency  was  to  lead  countries  to  regard 
with  jealousy  and  suspicion,  as  boons  to  foreigners,  alterations  in 
their  laws,  which,  though  doubtless  of  advantage  to  foreigners, 


48  THE  TARIFF  POLICY   OF 

would  have  been  of  far  greater  advantage  to  their  own  in- 
habitants. 

"  England,  finding  that  she  could  make  no  progress  in  thu 
direction,  took  her  own  course  ;  struck  rapid  and  decisive  blows  at 
the  system  of  protection ;  and  reduced,  as  far  as  the  exigencies  oi 
the  public  service  would  permit,  the  very  high  duties,  which  in 
many  cases  she  maintained  simply  for  the  purpose  of  revenue, 
upon  articles  that  had  no  domestic  produce  to  compete  with. 
While  our  reasoning  had  done  nothing,  or  less  than  nothing,  our 
example  effected  something  at  least,  if  less  than  we  could  have 
desired  :  and  commercial  freedom  has  made  some  progress  in  other 
countries  since  the  year  1846 ;  whereas  shortly  before  that  time, 
even  while  we  were  relaxing  our  tariff,  it  had  actually  lost  ground. 

"  When  we  endeavored  to  make  treaties,  we  were  constantly 
obstructed  by  the  idea,  prevailing  abroad,  that  the  reduction  of 
tariffs  would  redound  to  our  advantage  only,  and  would  be  detri- 
mental to  other  countries.  Politicians  and  speculatists  continued 
to  propagate  this  idea.  It  was  certainly  shaken,  when  the  world 
saw  us  expose  our  own  protected  interests  to  competition,  without 
making  a  condition  of  corresponding  relaxation  elsewhere  ;  but  I 
am  fearful  lest  it  should  again  make  head,  if  we  too  actively  em- 
ploy political  influence  in  urging  the  adoption  of  measures  for  the 
relaxation  of  foreign  tariffs." 

The  substance  of  this  remarkable  confession  of  a  Prime 
Minister  of  England  is  as  follows :  "  England  first  en- 
deavored to  negotiate,  with  the  principal  States  of  the  civil- 
ized world,  treaties  for  the  reciprocal  reduction  of  duties  on 
imports.  The  task  was  plied  on  her  side  with  sufficient  zeal ; 
but  in  every  case  she  failed."  "  Finding  that  she  could  make 
no  progress  in  this  direction,"  she  then  devised  the  free-trade 
scheme,  and  "  struck  rapid  and  decisive  blows  at  the  system  of 
protection."  And,  although  "  her  reasoning  had  done  nothing, 
or  less  than  nothing,"  she  hoped  that,  "  when  the  world  saw 
her  expose  her  own  protected  interests  to  competition,  without 
making  a  condition  of  corresponding  relaxation  elsewhere," 
her  example  would  prevail.  Viewed  in  connection  with  the 
actual  condition  of  Great  Britain  at  the  time  referred  to  by 
Mr.  Gladstone,  there  is  something  Quixotic  in  England 
"  striking  rapid  and  decisive  blows  at  the  system  of  pro  tec- 


ENGLAND   AND   THE   UNITED   STATES.  49 

/  tion."  The  largest  protected  interest  in  England  was  that  of 
corn  (breadstuff's)  ;  and  I  have  already  shown  that  the  repeal 
of  the  corn  laws  and  the  removal  of  the  duties  on  raw  mate- 
rials were  acts  of  necessity,  and  were  in  fact  only  another  way 

\  of  protecting  her  manufactures.  I  have  also  shown  that  the 
only  duties  on  her  leading  manufactures  which  operated  pro- 
tectively were  those  on  manufactures  of  silk ;  and  these  were 
retained.  What  the  example  of  England,  in  "  exposing  her 
own  protected  interests  to  competition  without  making  a  con- 
dition of  corresponding  relaxation  elsewhere,"  really  amounts 
to,  or  how  far  it  should  have  influence  in  shaping  the  course 
of  the  American  people,  it  is  needless  for  me  to  say.1 
Notwithstanding  that  England,  after  so  many  baffled  en- 
deavors to  adjust  by  treaty  stipulations  her  commerce  with 
other  nations,  seemed  to  have  abandoned  the  very  idea  in  de- 
spair, and  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  all  such  stipulations 
are  a  direct  infringement  of  that  free-trade  code  which  she 
professedly  adopted,2  she  surprised  the  world  by  concluding, 
in  1860,  a  commercial  treaty  with  France. 

1  In  1859,  three  years  after  the  date  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  letter,  England 
collected  a  larger  amount  of  customs  duties  on  the  tobacco  she  imported  from 
the  United  States  than  the  United  States  collected  on  all  the  articles  of  British 
manufacture  which  they  imported  from  England. 

2  "  Generally  speaking,  all  treaties  which  determine  what  the  duties  on  im- 
portation and  exportation  shall  be,  or  which  stipulate  for  preferences,  are  radi- 
cally objectionable.      Nations  ought  to  regulate  their  tariffs  in  whatever  mode 
they  judge  best  for  the  promotion  of  their  own  interests,  without  being  shackled 
by  engagements  with  others.     If  foreign  powers  be  all  treated  alike,  none  of 
them  has  just  grounds  of  complaint ;  and  it  can  rarely  be  for  the  interest  of  any 
people  to  show  preferences  to  one  over  another."  —  McCulloch. 

"  A  commercial  treaty  debars  Parliament  from  dealing  with  financial  ques- 
tions as  it  ought  to  do,  according  to  its  own  unbiassed  judgment,  unfettered  by 
any  foregone  conclusions  between  this  country  and  France,  but  with  reference 
only  to  our  own  domestic  interests."  —  Earl  Grey,  in  Debate  on  the  Anglo-French 
Treaty  of  1860.  See  Hansard,  vol.  clvi.  3d  series,  p.  1118. 

"  But  what  is  to  be  thought  of  a  free-trader  who  approves,  in  general,  of 
treaties  of  commerce  ?  Did  the  honorable  gentleman  ever  read  the  motion 
made  by  Mr.  Ricardo,  when  that  eminent  person,  skilled  in  political  economy, 
said  :  '  We  want  trade  ;  not  treaties  of  commerce,  for  they  are  opposed  to  our 
principles'?'  .  .  .  Why,  the  very  thing  itself  (a  commercial  treaty)  is  a  contra- 
diction of  your  creed."  —  Mr,  Whiteside:  Debate  in  House  of  Commons  on  Anglo- 
French  Treaty.  See  Hansard,  vol.  clvi.  3d  series,  p.  1640. 


50  THE   TAEIFF  POLICY   OF 

That  a  purpose  and  hope  to  influence  other  countries  — 
countries,  perhaps,  whose  trade  would  be  more  valuable  than 
that  of  France  is  ever  likely  to  be  —  was  one  of  the  motives 
which  prompted  English  statesmen  in  negotiating  the  Anglo- 
French  Treaty,  is  rendered  more  than  probable  by  the  follow- 
ing remarks  of  Mr.  Cobden.  They  are  part  of  a  letter  to  the 
Mayor  of  Manchester,  written  soon  after  Mr.  Cobden  returned 
from  Paris  :  — 

"  We  are  not,  I  trust,  taking  too  sanguine  a  view  of  the  effects 
of  the  recent  commercial  arrangement,  in  assuming  that  its  influ- 
ence will  be  felt  beyond  the  limits  of  the  two  countries  immediately 
concerned.  When  England  and  France  are  found  co-operating, 
whether  in  peace  or  in  war,  for  the  attainment  of  a  common  ob- 
ject, they  cannot  fail  to  make  their  policy  triumphant  throughout 
Europe  ;  and,  looking  at  the  negotiations  now  going  on  elsewhere, 
and  the  indications  generally  manifested,  I  am  led  to  the  conclu- 
sion that,  ere  long,  the  example  of  those  two  nations  will  induce  the 
whole  Continent  to  adopt  a  more  liberal  commercial  policy.  In 
the  mean  time,  whatever  hesitation  there  may  be  in  Europe,  or 
whatever  temporary  backsliding  there  may  be  in  America,  it  is  satis- 
factory to  know  that  England,  speaking  through  the  voice  of  Man- 
chester, remains  faithful  to  the  principles  of  unconditional  freedom 
of  trade.  If  it  be  accompanied  with  reciprocity  from  other  coun- 
tries, so  much  the  better  for  her  and  them ;  if  not,  so  much  the 
better  for  her  than  them." 

English  diplomacy  —  aided,  no  doubt,  by  the  action  of 
France,  as  Mr.  Cobden  anticipated  —  has  worried  other  Conti- 
nental nations  into  negotiating  commercial  treaties  ;  but  some 
of  those  nations,  after  giving  the  treaty  stipulations  a  fair 
trial,  express  dissatisfaction  with  their  effects. 

Speeches  in  Parliament  and  the  diplomacy  of  Downing 
Street  are  not  the  only  means  the  English  employ  to  induce 
the  nations  with  which  England  deals  to  favor  the  free  ad- 
mission of  her  productions.  By  articles  in  the  reviews  and 
magazines,  by  essays  and  editorials  in  the  daily  press,  and  by 
personal  discussions  with  strangers  who  visit  her  shores  for 
pleasure  or  for  business,  the  folly  of  those  nations  which  im- 


ENGLAND   AND   THE  UNITED   STATES.  51 

pose  protective  duties  on  imports  is  brought  into  unseemly 
prominence.  Many  will  recall  with  a  smile  the  unsuccessful 
attempt  of  the  English,  at  the  Centennial  Exhibition,  to  dis- 
credit our  tariff,  by  ticketing  their  goods  with  prices  with  and 
without  customs  duties. 

Although  they  often  —  too  often  —  assert  it,  are  we  to  be- 
lieve that  these  unceasing  efforts  of  the  English  to  influence 
the  commercial  regulations  of  other  countries  are  prompted 
by  motives  of  philanthropy  ?  The  facts  which  I  have  adduced 
forbid  such  a  belief.  When  we  consider  what  I  have  before 
stated,  that,  to  subsist  her  population,  Great  Britain  must 
annually  import  articles  for  food  to  the  value  of  over  eight 
hundred  millions  of  dollars  ;  that  to  pay  for  these  articles  she 
must  also  import  raw  materials,  to  be  used  in  manufacture,  to 
the  value  of  nearly  seven  hundred  millions  of  dollars,  and 
annually  find  a  foreign  market  for  her  manufactured  products 
to  the  value  of,  at  least,  twelve  hundred  millions  of  dollars,  —  we 
at  once  see  the  real  ground  of  her  anxiety  to  extend  the  area 
of  free-trade.  As  a  successful  rivalry  in  neutral  markets 
would  be  fatal  to  her  prosperity,  her  struggle  for  manufact- 
uring supremacy  is,  in  fact,  a  struggle  for  national  life.  It 
springs  from  the  strongest  motives  of  human  action,  —  the  law 
of  self-preservation.  To  imagine  that,  under  the  circum- 
stances, she  will  neglect  to  employ  any  and  every  influence 
likely,  in  her  opinion,  to  retard  the  manufacturing  progress  of 
other  countries,  is  to  expect  from  her  a  degree  of  disinter- 
estedness and  philanthropic  virtue  not  to  be  looked  for  in  any 
nation.  I  do  not  deny  her  right  to  use  any  and  all  the  means 
she  has  used  to  defend  her  own  interests ;  indeed,  it  would 
have  been  strange  had  she  done  otherwise.  But  that  so  many 
of  our  countrymen  should  innocently  walk  into  the  net  so 
adroitly  spread  for  them,  lay  aside  their  patriotism,  and  ad- 
vocate free-trade  because  the  English  advocate  it,  use  the 
same  arguments  for  its  adoption  in  the  United  States  that 
were  used  for  its  adoption  in  England,  irrespective  of  the 
widely  different  condition  of  the  two  countries ;  and,  con- 
founding the -advocacy  of  British  interests  with  philanthropic 
endeavor,  hob-nob  with  the  Cobdeu  Club,  and,  in  obedience 


52  THE  TARIFF  POLICY   OF 

to  its  behests,  seek  to  organize  similar  clubs  in  this  country, 
—  is,  to  say  the  least,  very  remarkable.  It  would  be  simply 
ludicrous,  were  it  not  a  serious  matter,  to  see  so  many  of  our 
fellow-men  in  a  state  of  actual  delusion  in  regard  to  a  common- 
sense,  practical,  business  question. 

With  the  free-trade  doctrinaire,  I  have  no  controversy. 
However  plausible  his  theory  may  seem,  it  has  no  practical 
value.  It  presupposes  a  condition  of  things  that  does  not 
exist,  nor  is  it  probable  ever  will  exist.  It  ignores  all  idea  of 
patriotism,  of  national  pride,  and  of  national  interests. 

"  If  all  the  countries  of  the  globe  were  actually,  or  were 
ready  to  become,  constituent  portions  of  one  and  the  same 
great  family,  the  theory  of  free-traders  might  seem  plausible. 
But  the  plain  truth  is,  that  the  whole  analogy  is  forced  and 
unnatural.  By  treating  the  human  race  as  one  great  family, 
we  are  not  following,  but  departing  from,  the  apparent  design 
of  Providence,  as  indicated  in  the  dispensations  that  every- 
where present  themselves  to  our  observation.  In  these.,  we 
are  totally  unable  to  discover  any  trace  of  the  ideal  corpora- 
tion. .  .  .  The  Deity  seems  to  have  stamped  on  the  features 
of  Nature  and  of  humanity,  in  unmistakable  characters,  that 
nations  shall  remain  separate  and  distinct,  each  pursuing, 
under  the  restraints  only  of  moral  obligations  and  just  laws, 
its  own  interests ;  and  thus,  in  beautiful  harmony  with  the 
similar  arrangements  among  individuals  of  the  same  nation, 
each,  however  unconsciously,  contributing  to  that  general 
good  which  is  but  the  aggregate  of  the  separate  good  of  all 
the  parts."  l 

If,  then,  it  is  a  part  of  the  Divine  economy  for  the  human 
race  to  organize  itself  into  separate  communities  called  nations, 
the  right  to  protect  and  defend  national  interests  must  also 
be  a  part  of  the  same  Divine  arrangement.  There  is  no  more 
reason  to  expect  the  adoption  of  universal  free-trade  than  of 
universal  peace.  Both  theories  rest  on  substantially  the  same 
grounds.  When  the  world  (if  ever)  is  in  a  condition  to 
practise  the  one,  it  will  be  in  a  condition  to  practise  the  other ; 

1  London  Quarterly  Review,  No.  171,  p.  86. 


ENGLAND   AND   THE   UNITED   STATES.  53 

but,  till  then,  it  is  as  much  the  duty  of  a  nation  to  defend  its 
industries  by  customs  duties,  as  it  is  to  defend  its  territory  by 
force  of  arms. 


CONCLUSION. 

Let  it  be  deeply  and  widely  impressed  on  the  popular 
mind,  let  it  be  adopted  as  an  axiom  by  our  government,- 
that  the  nation  which  produces  the  most  in  proportion  to  its 
numbers  will  be  the  most  prosperous  and  powerful  nation. 
That  our  natural  advantages  for  the  attainment  of  so  impor- 
tant a  result  are  all  that  could  be  desired,  no  one  will  ques- 
tion. It  rests  with  ourselves  to  determine  whether  those 
advantages  shall  be  turned  to  the  best  account.  To  that 
end,  it  is  necessary  that  we  should  diversify  industry,  and 
thereby  give  employment  to  all  the  people,  according  to  their 
tastes  and  capacities. 

I  have  dwelt  much  on  the  fact,  that  the  great  manufac- 
turing industries  which  enrich  nations  and  promote  the  welfare 
of  the  people  cannot  expand  and  prosper  here,  unless  the  dis- 
parities against  us  in  the  great  industrial  contest  are  counter- 
acted by  customs  duties.  It  is  also  necessary  that  we  should 
have  an  unwavering  public  policy.  For  the  best  results  in 
any  pursuit,  it  is  necessary  that  tl^ose  who  engage  in  it  should 
possess  a  well-grounded  confidence  in  the  wisdom  and  sta- 
bility of  legislation  ;  and  in  no  department,  probably,  of 
human  affairs  is  such  confidence  so  necessary  or  so  useful  as 
in  the  prosecution  of  manufacturing  industry.  Such  confi- 
dence the  English  manufacturer  has  always  enjoyed.  Alike 
in  peace  and  in  war,  and  under  all  administrations,  he  has  been 
able  to  rely  upon  the  steady  and  enlightened  co-operation  of 
his  government.  How  different  in  this  regard  is  the  position 
of  the  American  manufacturer !  His  government  is  some- 
times hostile  (though  unwittingly  so),  sometimes  friendly, 
and  sometimes  indifferent  to  the  needs  of  manufacturing 
industry  ;  and,  at  all  times,  partisan  and  theoretical  discus- 
sion so  misleads  the  popular  judgment  as  to  make  him  dis- 
trustful in  regard  to  its  future  action.  We  cannot  attain 


54     TARIFF  POLICY  OF  ENGLAND  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

the  high  position  as  a  manufacturing  nation  to  which  our 
opportunities  entitle  us,  unless  our  tariff  policy  becomes 
more  intelligent  in  purpose  and  more  uniform  in  character. 
Surely  the  settlement  of  so  momentous  a  question  should  no 
longer  be  left  to  chance  legislation.  The  general  require- 
ments of  production  ;  the  relations  and  reciprocal  depend- 
ence of  the  producer  and  the  distributor  ;  the  statistics  of 
•our  own  trade,  agriculture,  manufactures,  and  other  indus- 
tries, and  similar  statistics  in  regard  to  all  the  great  commer- 
cial and  producing  countries,  —  are  among  the  facts  which  our 
legislators  need  to  know,  arid  without  which  they  cannot 
safely  act. 

The  question  must  be  removed  from  the  narrow  arena 
of  partisan  politics,  of  sectional  and  individual  selfishness. 
There  is  one  safe  ground  which  we  may  all  take,  —  one 
broad  ground  on  which  we  can  all  stand,  — and  that  is,  the 
American  ground.  Let  us  ever  remember  that  it  is  our  own 
country,  and  not  some  other  country,  whose  interests  are 
intrusted  to  our  keeping.  Providence  has  not  imposed  upon 
us  the  impossible  task  of  looking  after  the  rest  of  the  world. 
In  taking  proper  care  of  ourselves,  —  always,  however,  with 
strict  regard  to  the  unchanging  rules  of  honor  and  justice 
and  to  the  best  dictates  of  humanity,  — we  shall,  as  a  nation, 
pursue  the  path  that  leads,  not  only  to  wealth  and  happi- 
ness at  home,  but  to  respect  and  influence  abroad.  It  is 
the  nation  of  great  internal  resources,  of  vigorous  productive 
power  and  self-dependent  strength,  which  is  always  best  pre- 
pared and  most  able,  not  only  to  defend  itself,  but  to  lend 
others  a  helping  hand.  It  is  by  conforming  to  the  plain 
teachings  of  common  sense  and  experience,  not  by  listening 
to  the  dreamy  suggestions  of  a  chimerical  cosmopolitanism, 
that  we  are  to  raise  our  country  to  its  proper  place  among 
the  nations,  —  a  place  which,  if  we  are  true  to  ourselves,  will 
be  second  to  no  other  in  arts  or  in  arms. 


APPENDIX. 


APPENDIX. 


IN  establishing  an  American  tariff  policy,  the  following 
citations  of  the  views  held  by  some  of  the  ablest  statesmen 
of  our  day,  and  the  wisest  of  those  who  laid  the  foundations 
of  the  Republic,  are  worthy  of  thoughtful  consideration. 
Dr.  FRANKLIN,  writing  from  London  in  1771,  to  HUMPHREY 
MARSHALL,  used  the  following  language :  — 

"  Every  manufacturer  encouraged  in  our  country  makes  part  of 
a  market  for  provisions  within  ourselves,  and  saves  so  much 
money  to  the  country  as  must  otherwise  be  exported  to  pay  for 
the  manufactures  he  supplies.  Here,  in  England,  it  is  well  known 
and  understood  that,  wherever  a  manufacture  is  established  which 
employs  a  number  of  hands,  it  raises  the  value  of  land  in  the 
neighboring  country  all  around  it ;  partly  by  the  greater  demand 
near  at  hand  for  the  produce  of  the  land,  and  partly  from  the 
plenty  of  money  drawn  by  the  manufacturers  to  that  part  of  the 
country.  It  seems,  therefore,  the  interest  of  all  our  farmers  and 
owners  of  lands  to  encourage  our  young  manufactures  in  prefer- 
ence to  foreign  ones  imported  among  us  from  distant  countries." 

In  1815,  THOMAS  JEFFERSON  wrote,  as  follows  to  J.  B. 
SAY:  — 

"  Experience  has  shown,  that  continued  peace  depends  not 
merely  on  our  own  justice  and  prudence,  but  on  that  of  others 
also ;  that,  when  forced  into  a  war,  the  interception  of  exchanges 
which  must  be  made  across  a  wide  ocean  becomes  a  powerful  weapon 
in  the  hands  of  an  enemy  domineering  over  that  element,  and,  to 
other  distresses  of  war,  adds  the  want  of  all  those  necessaries  for 
which  we  have  permitted  ourselves  to  be  dependent  on  others,  — 
even  arms  and  clothing.  This  fact,  therefore,  solves  the  question, 
by  reducing  to  its  ultimate  form,  whether  profit  or  preservation  is 
the  first  interest  of  the  State?  We  are  consequently  become 


58  APPENDIX. 

manufacturers  to  a  degree  incredible  to  those  who  do  not  see  it, 
and  who  only  consider  the  short  period  of  time  during  which  we 
have  been  driven  to  them  by  the  suicidal  policy  of  England.  The 
prohibitory  duties  we  lay  on  all  articles  of  foreign  manufacture 
which  prudence  requires  us  to  establish  at  home,  with  tha^atriotic 
determination  of  every  good  citizen  to  use  no  foreign  article 
which  can  be  made  within  ourselves,  without  regard  to  difference 
of  prices,  securesus  against  relapse  into  foreign  dependency." 

The  constitutionality  of  our  protective  laws  was  strongly 
affirmed  and  conclusively  argued  by  JAMES  MADISON  ;  and 
no  one  certainly  could  speak  on  such  points  with  more  au- 
thority. In  a  letter  to  JOSEPH  C.  CABELL,  dated  Sept.  18, 
1828,  Mr.  MADISON  thus  winds  up  the  long  and  convincing 
argument:  — 

"  A  further  evidence  in  support  of  the  constitutional  power  to 
protect  and  foster  manufactures  by  regulations  of  trade  —  an  evi- 
dence that  ought  of  itself  to  settle  the  question  —  is  the  uniform 
and  practical  sanction  given  to  the  power  by  the  general  govern- 
ment for  nearly  forty  years,  with  a  concurrence  or  acquiescence  of 
every  State  government  throughout  the  same  period  ;  and,  it  may 
be  added,  through  all  the  vicissitudes  of  party  which  marked  that 
period.  No  novel  construction,  however  ingeniously  devised,  or 
however  respectable  and  patriotic  its  patrons,  can  withstand  the 
weight  of  such  authorities,  or  the  unbroken  current  of  so  pro- 
longed and  universal  a  practice ;  and  well  is  it  that  this  cannot 
be  done  without  the  intervention  of  the  same  authority  which 
made  the  Constitution.  If  it  could  be  so  done,  there  would  be  an 
end  to  that  stability  in  government  and  in  laws  which  is  essential 
to  good  government  and  good  laws,  —  a  stability  the  want  of 
which  is  the  imputation  which  has,  at  all  times,  been  levelled 
against  republicanism  with  most  effect." 

In  a  letter  to  the  same  individual,  written  a  few  weeks 
later,  Mr.  MADISON  thus  alludes  to  the  laissez  faire  doctrine, 
and  to  the  fallacy  of  free-trade  :  — 

"  The  theory  of  '  let  us  alone '  supposes  that  all  nations  concur 
in  a  perfect  freedom  of  commercial  intercourse.  Were  this  the 


APPENDIX.  59 

case,  they  would,  in  a  commercial  view,  be  but  one  nation,  as 
much  as  the  several  districts  composing  a  particular  nation ;  and 
the  theory  would  be  as  applicable  to  the  former  as  to  the  latter. 
But  this  golden  age  of  free-trade  has  not  yet  arrived,  nor  is  there 
a  single  nation  that  has  set  the  example.  No  nation  can,  indeed, 
safely  do  so,  until  a  reciprocity  at  least  be  insured  to  it.  ...  A 
nation  leaving  its  foreign  trade,  in  all  cases,  to  regulate  itself, 
might  soon  find  it  regulated  by  other  nations  into  subserviency  to 
a  foreign  interest.  In  the  interval  between  the  peace  of  1783  and 
the  establishment  of  the  present  Constitution  of  the  United  States, 
the  want  of  a  general  authority  to  regulate  trade  is  known  to  have 
had  this  consequence.  .  .  .  The  theory  supposes,  moreover,  a  per- 
petual peace ;  a  supposition,  it  is  to  be  feared,  not  less  chimerical 
than  a  universal  freedom  of  commerce." 

Few  of  our  great  men  have  left  behind  them  a  deeper  im- 
pression of  their  practical  sagacity  than  ANDREW  JACKSON. 
Read  what,  in  1824,  he  wrote  to  Dr.  COLMAN  :  — 

"  You  ask  my  opinion  on  the  tariff.  I  answer,  that  I  am  in 
favor  of  a  judicious  examination  and  revision  of  it;  and  so  far  as 
the  tariff-bill  before  us  embraces  the  design  of  fostering,  protect- 
ing, and  preserving  within  ourselves  the  means  of  national  defence 
and  independence,  particularly  in  a  state  of  war,  I  would  advocate 
and  support  it.  The  experience  of  the  late  war  ought  to  teach  us 
a  lesson,  and  one  never  to  be  forgotten.  If  our  liberty  and  re- 
publican form  of  government  procured  for  us  by  our  Revolutionary 
fathers  are  worth  the  blood  and  treasure  at  which  they  were  ob- 
tained, it  surely  is  our  duty  to  protect  and  defend  them.  .  .  . 
This  tariff — I  mean  a  judicious  one  —  possesses  more  fanciful 
than  real  danger.  I  will  ask,  What  is  the  real  situation  of  the 
agriculturist  ?  Where  has  the  American  farmer  a  market  for  his 
surplus  product  ?  Except  for  cotton,  he  has  neither  a  foreign  nor 
home  market.  Does  not  this  clearly  prove,  when  there  is  no 
market  either  at  home  or  abroad,  that  there  is  too  much  labor  em- 
ployed in  agriculture,  and  that  the  channels  for  labor  should  be 
multiplied  ?  Common  sense  points  out  the  remedy.  Draw  from 
agriculture  the  superabundant  labor ;  employ  it  in  mechanism  and 
manufactures,  thereby  creating  a  home  market  for  your  bread- 
stuffs,  and  distributing  labor  to  the  most  profitable  account  and 
benefits  to  the  country.  Take  from  agriculture,  in  the  United 


60  APPENDIX. 

States,  six  hundred  thousand  men,  women,  and  children,  and  yon 
will  at  once  give  a  home  market  for  more  breadstuffs  than  all 
Europe  now  furnishes  us.  In  short,  sir,  we  have  been  too  long  sub- 
ject to  the  policy  of  British  merchants.  It  is  time  that  we  should 
become  a  little  more  Americanized,  and,  instead  of  feeding  the 
paupers  and  laborers  of  England,  feed  our  own ;  or  else,  in  a  short 
time,  by  continuing  our  present  policy,  we  shall  be  rendered 
paupers  ourselves." 

In  his  second  annual  message  to  Congress  (Dec.  7,  1830), 
President  JACKSON  closes  an  argument  in  favor  of  the  con- 
stitutional right  to  so  adjust  the  customs  duties  as  to  encour- 
age domestic  industry,  with  these  words  :  — 

"  In  this  conclusion,  I  am  confirmed  as  well  by  the  opinions  of 
Presidents  WASHINGTON,  JEFFERSON,  MADISON,  and  MONROE,  who 
have  each  repeatedly  recommended  the  exercise  of  this  right 
under  the  Constitution,  as  by  the  uniform  practice  of  Congress, 
the  continual  acquiescence  of  the  States,  and  the  general  under- 
standing of  the  people." 

DANIEL  WEBSTER,  addressing,  in  1833,  the  mechanics  and 
manufacturers  of  Buffalo,  spoke  as  follows  :  — 

"Desiring  always  to  avoid  extremes,  and  to  observe  a  prudent 
moderation  in  regard  to  the  protective  system,  I  yet  hold  steadi- 
ness and  perseverance  in  maintaining  what  has  been  established 
to  be  essential  to  the  public  prosperity.  Nothing  can  be  worse 
than  that  what  concerns  the  daily  labor  and  the  daily  bread  of 
whole  classes  of  the  people  should  be  subject  to  frequent  and  vio- 
lent changes.  It  were  far  better  not  to  move  at  all,  than  to  move 
forward,  and  then  fall  back  again. 

"  My  sentiments,  gentlemen,  on  the  tariff  question  are  gener- 
ally known.  In  my -opinion,  a  just  and  a  leading  object  in  the 
whole  system  is  the  encouragement  and  protection  of  American 
manual  labor.  I  confess  that  every  day's  experience  convinces 
me  more  and  more  of  the  high  propriety  of  regarding  this  object. 
Our  government  is  made  for  all,  not  for  a  few.  Its  object  is  to 
promote  the  greatest  good  of  the  whole ;  and  this  ought  to  be 
kept  constantly  in  view  in'  its  administration.  The  far  greater 
number  of  those  who  maintain  the  government  belong  to  what 


APPENDIX.  61 

may  be  called  the  industrious  or  productive  classes  of  the  com- 
munity. With  us,  labor  is  not  depressed,  ignorant,  and  unintelli- 
gent :  on  the  contrary,  it  is  active,  spirited,  enterprising,  seeking 
its  own  rewards,  and  laying  up  for  its  own  competence  and  its 
own  support.  The  motive  to  labor  is  the  great  stimulus  to  our 
whole  society,  and  no  system  is  wise  or  just  which  does  not 
afford  this  stimulus  as  far  as  it  may.  The  protection  of  American 
labor  against  the  injurious  competition  of  foreign  labor,  so  far  at 
least  as  respects  general  handicraft  productions,  is  known  histori- 
cally to  have  been  one  end  designed  to  be  obtained  by  establishing 
the  Constitution;  and  this  object,  and  the  constitutional  power  to 
accomplish  it,  ought  never  to  be  surrendered  or  compromised  in 
any  degree." 

In  his  farewell  Address,  WASHINGTON  thus  points  out 
the  danger  of  conforming  National  policy  to  cosmopolitan 
ideas :  — 

"  It  is  folly  in  one  nation  to  look  for  disinterested  favors  from 
another ;  that  it  must  pay,  with  a  portion  of  its  independence,  for 
whatever  it  may  accept  under  that  character ;  that,  by  such  accept- 
ance, it  may  place  itself  in  the  condition  of  having  given  equiva- 
lents for  nominal  favors,  and  yet  of  being  reproached  with 
ingratitude  for  not  giving  more.  There  can  be  no  greater  error 
than  to  expect,  or  calculate  upon,  real  favors  from  nation  to  nation. 
It  is  an  illusion  which  experience  must  cure,  which  a  just  pride 
ought  to  discard." 


Cambridge:  Press  of  John  Wilsou  &  Son. 


II 


'"s?aif |sia~jite 

' — s~^=stt"-5 


MAY 


VC  05896 


